LETTERS 


THEO  BROWN 


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ttfiSB  LIBRARY 


> 


LETTERS 


OF 


THEO.  BROWN 


SELECTED   AND   ARRANGED   BY 

SARAH    THEO.    BROWN 


WORCESTER 
PUTNAM,    DAVIS    &    CO. 

1898 


THIRD    AND    ENLARGED    EDITION. 


I'  R  ESS     O  F 
CHAS.     HAMILTON, 

WORCESTER. 


TO 
CHILDREN,  GRANDCHILDREN  AND 

FRIENDS, 

THIS  VOLUME  IS  AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED. 


LETTERS. 


1846. 


Such  a  night  as  this,  you  have  not 
in  your  Philadelphia,  such  a  profusion  of 
jewelry  and  democratic  distribution  of  the 
same,  alike  on  the  mansion  and  the  shanty, 
and  the  great  full  moon  so  lavish  of  its  light 
over  all,  taking  no  more  pains  to  gild  the 
palace  than  the  hovel ;  there  is  no  sham  in 
Dame  Nature's  democracy.  There  is  some 
thing  in  this  cold  glitter  of  moonlight  on  ice, 
which  takes  right  hold  of  me,  and  seems  to 
suggest  that  this  life  I  am  leading  is  but  a 
shabby  apology  for  a  real  life  ;  what  means 
this  "old  discontent,"  this  dissatisfaction 
we  feel  with  our  every  day  lives ;  I  come 
out  of  the  store  and  look  up  at  the  stars, 
and  my  business  seems  to  contribute,  not 
the  least  fraction  of  nutriment  for  my  soul ; 


6  Letters. 

but  a  strain  of  music  comes  to  my  ear,  or  I 
come  across  a  bed  of  frost  gems  on  an 
autumn  morning,  or  a  bed  of  anemones  in 
spring,  or  a  bundle  of  sunbeams  comes 
millions  of  miles  to  shine  through  a  knot 
hole  in  Charles  Allen's  fence,  and  behold 
how  mean  our  shops,  our  farms,  our  lives, 
in  comparison  with  these  little  reveries — 
are  these  then  the  only  realities  ?  It  would 
seem  as  though  these  pursuits  which  absorb 
all  our  powers  and  hours,  should  educate  us 
body  and  soul,  but  these  speculations  will 
lead  to  the  use  of  more  paper,  ink  and  time 
than  I  can  give,  but  of  course,  I  can  clear 
it  all  up  for  you,  when  I  have  leisure. 

I  feel  that  I  am  half  asleep  much  of  the 
time,  but  I  occasionally  rouse  up  a  little 
and  look  over  the  taffrail  of  my  craft  and 
half  realize  that  something  is  passing,  but 
the  something  passes  without  rubbing  against 
me  much  and  goes  out  of  sight  astern  and 
is  buried,  and  the  sea  sings  over  it — another 
chance  perhaps  sometime,  somewhere. 


Letters.  7 

SEEKONK,  1847. 

Here  I  am,  sitting  beside  a  little  pond 
with  inlet  at  bottom  and  outlet  at  top,  where 
I  used  to  play  when  a  boy,  and  here  are 
turtles,  coming  up  to  the  surface,  the  chil 
dren's  children,  etc.,  of  those  I  used  to  look 
at  with  such  interest,  and  wonder  how  they 
could  live  in  the  water.  The  frogs  are  sit 
ting  on  the  margin  and  ever  and  anon  one 
jumps  at  something  that  may,  or  may 
not,  serve  as  provender.  I  believe  they  are 
not  always  very  discriminating  !  Turtles  are 
standing  on  stones,  their  legs  bent  up  over 
their  shells,  in  apparently  a  most  uncom 
fortable  position,  close  by  me  a  cat-bird 
noiselessly  hops  about,  and  lots  of  other 
birds  are  coming  and  going,  some  to  look 
about,  some  to  get  whatever  they  may  find 
useful  to  their  families — oh  how  quiet  it  is 
here  !  let  revolutions  come  and  go,  what  are 
they  to  the  dwellers  in  this  quiet  spot,— 
but  I  must  say  good-bye  to  this  dear  place, 
and  somehow  I  feel  it  must  be  a  long  one. 


8  Letters. 

Good-bye  quiet  sunny  pond,  but  if  death 
does  not  rob  me  of  memory,  I'll  visit  you 
again,  and  I  know  I  shall  consider  the  time 
well  spent. 


1847. 

Do  you  expect  me  to  defend  Emerson  ? 
He  doesn't  try  to  defend  himself,  and  unfor 
tunately  I  am  unable  to  do  so,  or  often  to 
give  the  remotest  hint  of  the  meaning  of 
some  of  his  sayings,  sometimes  when  occa 
sion  seems  to  demand  that  I  should.  Your 
letter  led  me  to  ask  myself  if  after  all  it  was 
"sentimental  dreaming"  as  you  term  it, 
and  if  after  all  I  may  not  soon  come  to 
laughing  at  my  former  self;  possibly,  I 
have  laughed  at  a  good  many  of  my  former 
selves.  Be  that  as  it  may,  I  have  found 
in  Emerson  that  which  makes  life  richer  to 
me  and,  although  he  has  not  "ciphered  out 
the  universe  "  yet,  a  sum  the  celestials  may 
not  be  able  to  do,  on  the  blue  canopy 


Letters.  9 

above,  he  makes  me  contented  to  go  un- 
ciphered,  and  I  love  everything  better, 
my  wife  and  boy,  even  cutting  coats,  I  had 
almost  said,  as  well  as  other  pursuits  we 
call  higher. 

I  hope  what  you  wrote  about  Carlyle 
is  not  true.  The  fact  of  his  veneration  for 
Robert  Burns  goes  a  great  way  with  me  to 
prove  its  untruth ;  a  good  deal  of  virtuous 
indignation  has  been  expended  upon  Burns, 
which  seems  likely  to  be  all  wasted,  for 
we  can't  help  loving  him.  It  will  take  a 
thorough  change  of  heart  and  one  which 
would  fit  for  some  place  beside  a  respect 
able  heaven,  to  do  other  than  love  Burns. 


February,  1847. 
To  J.  D. 

Those  ' '  grave  "  reflections  of  yours  are 
rather,  cool,  John,  for  a  man  with  such  a 
young  blooming  wife  as  your  Charlotte,  to 


10  Letters. 

be  indulging  in.  But  I  sometimes  have 
pleasant  thoughts  of  the  sleep  that  is  to 
come — perchance  under  some  little  pine,  in 
our  cemetery,  that  may  now  be  practising 
the  dirge  that  it  will  sing  over  me — its  faith 
ful  shadow  daily  and  nightly  in  the  sun  and 
moonlight  crossing  my  grave,  and  how  com 
fortable  we  shall  look  in  the  winter  packed 
away  with  our  thick  white  coverlids,  so  care 
fully  laid  on  and  well  tucked  in  about  us. 

But  we  will  hope  to  wake  up  in  some 
great  morning  somewhere,  sometime.  Shall 
we  remember  these  mornings  here,  in  that 
morning,  which  we  fain  would  hope  will 
break  on  us  bye-and-bye  ?  These  question 
ings  are  not  answered ;  the  curtain  hiding 
the  past  and  future  is  well  fastened  down. 
There  are  those  who  think  they  have  vague 
reminiscences  of  the  place  from  which  they 
came,  but  death  seems  to  be  the  admission 
fee  for  entrance  to  the  place  to  which  we 
are  all  going,  and  we  get  no  reliable  infor 
mation  concerning  it  from  those  who  have 
preceded  us.  The  experience  we  have  had 


Letters.  \  \ 

here,  I  think,  has  been  a  first-rate  one,  and 
well  worth  the  moderate  price  of  admission. 


April  18th,  1847. 
To  el.  D. 

I  found  a  beautiful  little  bed  of  arbutus 
to-day,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  canal,  in  the 
woods  this  side  of  where  Burbank's  paper- 
mill  used  to  be.  By  the  way,  speaking  of 
those  mills,  reminds  me  of  a  little  sobering 
reverie,  that  I  found  myself  coming  out  of, 
one  pleasant  day  awhile  ago,  leaning  on  the 
railing  of  a  bridge  that  crosses  the  canal,  in 
that  same  village,  my  eye  resting  on  that 
pretty  sheet  of  water  that  turns  so  grace 
fully  over  that  old  dam.  But  it  turns  no 
mill-wheel  now.  Where,  I  asked  myself,  is 
the  florid-faced,  aristocratic,  big,  little  man 
who  was  wont  to  raise  such  a  dust  and 
clatter  here  ?  His  surroundings — how  bright 
they  all  look  in  the  past !  His  always  newly 


1 2  Letters. 

shaven  and  shining  face,  the  fine  black  broad 
cloth  in  which  he  was  dressed,  the  heavy 
carriage  in  which  he  was  every  seventh  day 
carefully  trundled  to  church,  the  horses  and 
harnesses,  all  glittering !  It  seems  as  if  the 
sun  was  partial  in  shining  and  took  especial 
care  to  show  off  all  that  belonged  to  him. 
But  who  can  write  a  reverie  ?  The  atmos 
phere  in  which  I  thus  mused,  I  cannot  put 
upon  paper.  You  can  imagine  how  't  was 
there,  the  old  striped  mills  all  gone,  and  the 
little  water-wheel  monotonously  babbling  of 
the  past,  etc.  I  find  these  etc.'s  very  useful 
indeed  at  times. 


October,  1847. 
To  J.  D. 

For  the  last  three  weeks,  I  have  been 
so  confined,  that  all  these  beautiful  October 
days  have  gone  without  my  getting  more 
from  them  than  what  has  come  to  me, 
through  the  windows  of  the  store.  If  they 


Letters.  13 

were  to  be  repeated,  I  should  regret  less 
the  loss  of  these  fading  autumn  days,  since 
nothing  of  the  kind  is  promised  us  in  the 
next  world  ;  all  the  glories  there  are  said  to 
be  unfading — the  spring  eternal.  It  seems 
to  me,  I  should  like  to  have  an  October, 
with  its  fringed  gentians,  dropping  leaves, 
etc.,  once  in  awhile.  November  I  should 
not  care  so  much  about.  Write  me  an 
epitaph,  if  I  should  fail  of  cutting  a  passage 
through  this  mountain  of  woolens  they  have 
been  heaping  on  me  of  late. 


1848. 

The  days  are  shaded  by  the  death  of  our 
dear  old  Mother.  While  the  sun  was  setting 
on  Tuesday  evening  she  breathed  her  last. 
Her  simple  trust  in  God  through  life  has 
always  seemed  beautiful  to  me,  and  it  Avas  a 
grea,t  consolation  to  us,  to  see  her  supported 
by  it,  to  the  last.  Oh,  how  my  whole  life 
came  before  me  as  I  looked  upon  her  face 


14  Letters. 

after  death  !  She  never  looked  so  beautiful. 
How  ashamed  her  face  made  me  of  my  sins, 
or  rather  how  it  moved  me  to  her  virtues. 


January  13th,  1851. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  had  an  unpleasant  dream  last  night ; 
dreamed  of  looking  in  a  mirror,  and  ex 
perienced  some  unpleasant  reflections  re 
specting  the  falling  in  of  my  earthly  taber 
nacle.  Well,  all  this  and  much  more,  is  to 
be  realized  in  due  time — if  I  live.  The 
time  will  come,  if  I  live,  and  live  here  in 
Worcester,  when  I  shall  have  to  stop  in  nay 
walks  short  of  all  my  favorite  old  places,  and 
farther  along,  like  other  old  men,  I  shall 
sit  down  slow  and  breathe  hard  after  doing 
so,  though  I  may  have  only  walked  in  from 
the  garden.  All  this  decaying  and  falling 
in  of  the  outward  man  I  can  contemplate 
with  some  good  degree,  the  common,  I  sup- 


Letters.  15 

pose  of  acquiescence,  but  I  have  some 
anxious  forebodings  respecting  the  state  of 
my  inward  man  when  I  come  to  be  old. 
The  thought  is  not  pleasant  to  me,  that  I 
may  grow  conservative  and  hard — have  no 
faith — no  aspirations — no  faith  in  the  possi 
bilities  of  the  soul,  of  the  possibility  of  that 
which  can  be  proved  to  be  impossible.  I 
suppose  this  anxiety  which  I  expend  upon 
the  future  might  be  more  judiciously  laid 
out  on  the  present.  The  state  of  soul  I  now 
desire  in  my  old  age,  or  some  better  state,  I 
rnay  undoubtedly  have — but,  on  certain  con 
ditions.  The  surest  way  of  being  alive 
to-morrow  is  to  live  to-day.  By  living  now, 
we  prepare  for  the  future,  not  only  by  carry 
ing  our  life  enlarged  and  made  more  alive 
with  us  into  the  future,  but  the  reminiscences 
of  our  better  moments  of  to-day,  may  help 
sustain  us  in  the  dark  hours,  that  are  thickly 
enough  strewn  in  the  future. 


16  Letters. 

August  Ixt,   1852. 
To  J.  D. 

I  took  one  day  in  Providence  to  visit 
Attleborough.  This  place  had  the  honor  of 
being  my  residence  from  the  time  I  was 
twelve  until  I  was  sixteen  years  old.  I 
Avalked  from  the  cars,  which  I  left  a  little 
this  side  of  Pawtucket,  across  lots,  nearly 
all  the  way,  which  way  was  entirely  new  to 
me.  It  was  a  very  interesting  walk,  fol 
lowing  a  path  that  led  over  the  tops  of 
little  bare  hills.  Deep  down  in  a  val 
ley,  between  the  hills,  was  a  little  pond, 
nearly  covered  with  coarse  lily-pads,  among 
which  some  cows  were  standing  to  keep  cool 
and  to  keep  off  the  flies.  The  pads  had  a 
seared,  blasted  look,  and  the  whole  scene 
took  on  an  infernal  aspect.  I  was  in  Dante's 
regions,  and  the  cows  were  some  old  sinners 
in  disguise  (cowards,  perhaps),  and  there 
they  are  to  be  forever,  swinging  their  tails  to 
keep  off  the  flies,  which  will  never  cease  to 
bite — devils  every  one  of  them. 


Letters.  \  7 

I  went  through  a  place  called  Robin 
Hollow,  which  is  only  half  a  mile  from  the 
house  where  I  lived,  and  I  think  I  was 
never  there  before.  The  old  man  with 
whom  I  lived  hammered  away  on  the  virtue 
of  industry,  in  the  most  emphatic  way  man 
ever  hammered,  and  the  afternoons  for  plav 
of  any  kind  were  very  few.  My  playing  in 
summer  evening  twilights  was  generally  in 
the  yard,  and  not  much  farther  awa}r  from 
the  door-stone  than  the  kittens.  I  found  but 
one  of  the  family  living,  and  she  was  pretty 
old,  forty-three  years  ago.  We  plunged 
right  into  the  past,  and  while  in  the  midst  of 
it,  I  was  feeling  that  the  present  was  only 
useful  to  drag  the  past  into,  some  kettle 
began  boiling  over,  which  awakened  her  to 
such  a  lively  sense  of  the  present  that  she 
quickly  dropped  me  and  the  past,  and  went 
out  of  the  room  on  a  swift  trot,  to  look  after 
the  skillet.  I  was  taken  into  the  parlor  to 
see  the  portraits  of  her  parents.  The  old 
man  had  changed  so  much  that  his  picture 
wTas  of  no  account  to  me,  but  that  of  his  wife 
2 


18  Letters. 

brought  back  her  kind  old  face,  and  I  was 
glad  to  see  it.  In  spite  of  her  tea  and  coffee, 
which  were  so  strong  of  water  that  a  little 
mental  process  was  necessary  to  distinguish 
between  them — (a  simple  process — if  it  was 
night  it  was  tea,  if  morning  coffee) — and  a 
general  corresponding  thinness  of  diet,  and 
a  like  lack  of  edge  to  her  conversation,  I 
would  go  a  great  way  to  look  into  her  serene 
face  again  and  plant  a  hearty  kiss  among 
the  soft  old  wrinkles,  and  tell  her  how  I 
appreciate  now  the  unclouded  sunshine  that 
shone  from  her  face  through  those  four 
years  of  my  youth. 

One  great  object  I  had  in  visiting  this 
place  was  to  satisfy  a  yearning  I  had  to  see 
again  a  meadow,  not  far  from  the  house,  and 
look  into  a  stream  that  runs  through  it,  on 
the  side  of  which  I  used  to  make  hay  and 
spread  swaths,  looking  as  I  had  opportunity 
into  the  cool,  deep  holes,  with  their  clear, 
sandy  bottoms,  over  which  the  fish  were 
poised  so  still,  as  if  absorbed  in  intense 
thought.  A  strange  beauty  that  stream  had 


Letters.  19 

for  me  in  those  days,  and  still  has, —  a  beauty 
deep  down,  which  I  can  hardly  hint  at,  in 
words.  And  there  it  all  was,  the  stream 
running  the  same  way,  the  same  weeds  and 
bushes  beside  it,  the  same  twittering  and 

O 

chittering  of  birds  in  the  bushes,  and  the 
same  wild  scream  of  the  bluejay  in  the  high 
pines,  a  little  distance  away — all  was  going 
on  the  same,  and  looked  as  young  as  it  did 
twenty-five  years  ago.  My  two  companions 
were  talking  about  the  value  of  the  land, 
etc.,  and  Avere  in  a  hurry,  and  gave  me  but 
a  moment  for  looking  and  thinking,  else  I 
might  have  contributed  a  few  drops  to  the 
stream  of  a  sorrowfuller  sort. 


1858. 


I  went  to  a  field  of  laurel  on  the  west  side 
of  the  hill,  beyond  Mr.  Had\ven's  farm,  and 
there  it  was,  white  as  snow  and  about  the 
same  temperature.  But,  the  coming  home 
is  Avhat  I  have  in  mind.  It  was  one  of  those 


20  Letters. 

gray  twilight  evenings  in  which  objects  have 
no  outline  and  one  of  the  kind  which  in 
spires  one  with  sober  cheer,  a  cheer  that 
seems  in  the  grain,  and  as  I  went  forward 
with  my  laurel  on  my  back,  crossing  a  large 
field,  it  came  to  me  that  I  was  looking  like 
the  man  in  the  old  almanac  picture — 

O'er  mountains  and  moorlands, 
Through  sleet  and  through  snow. 


1858. 

Here  we  are  in  the  afternoon  of  summer, 
and  the  afternoon  was  preceded  by  a  morn 
ing,  and  that  by  a  spring,  and  yet  during 
all  this  time  our  correspondence  has  been  at  a 
stand-still.  The  winter  melted  into  spring, 
the  skunk-cabbage  came  up  out  of  the 
ground  right  on  the  heels  of  the  first  cow 
slip,  followed  by  all  manner  of  things  creep 
ing  and  flying,  all  these  things  of  which  wo 
have  not  spoken,  and  I  must  confess  I  have 
seen  less  of  the  seasons  of  late.  Before 


Letters.  21 

spring  opened,  I  thought  now  I  will  be  up 
to  the  occasion  and  not  let  any  of  it  slip 
through  my  fingers.  But  things  go  with 
such  a  rush  in  these  latter  days,  I  gave  it  up 
until  next  spring,  very  soon  after  the  skunk- 
cabbage  opened.  I  have  been  out  some  on 
Sundays  and  have  had  some  glimpses  of  the 
beauty,  things  look  interesting,  but  I  feel 
like  an  ignorant  person  who  finds  himself  in 
company  above  him.  But  after  all  what's 
the  use  of  knowing  so  much  about  things? 
the  reveries  that  possessed  me,  when  I  was 
a  boy,  while  looking  into  the  cool,  deep 
places  in  the  stream  that  ran  through  the 
meadow,  where  I  spread  hay,  were  not  born 
of  profound  knowledge,  for  there  were  many 
subjects  which  I  had  not  then  exhausted, 
yet  those  reveries  seem  to  me  as  valuable  as 
those  of  later  years. 


July  16th,  1861. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

In  a  letter  which  I  think  you  did  not 
receive,  I  was  somewhat  eloquent  concerning 


22  Letters. 

a  large  field  of  daisies  on  the  slope  of  the 
farthest  hill  we  can  see  in  the  west  from 
William  street.  It  has  been  an  inspiring 
object  to  me,  this  summer.  The  field  is 
quite  extensive,  and  though  it  is  one,  looks 
like  two  fields,  from  here, — two  great  pla 
teaus  away  off  there,  under  the  sun.  The 
silent  grandeur  they  impart  to  the  neighbor 
ing  barn  is  very  impressive  to  me.  I  have 
never  seen,  or  shall  see,  anything  in  the  way 
of  landscape  painting  that  will  begin  with  my 
daisy  field.  How  the  views  one  occasionally 
gets  of  this  kind  of  the  actual  thing,  cheap 
ens  the  best  imitations.  At  least  so  it  seems 
to  me  now,  and  so  T  have  said  it.  I  pre 
sume  Raskin  could  make  me  look  like  a  fool 
to  the  world,  at  least,  and  perhaps  to  my 
self  ;  but,  with  my  present  ignorance  of  the 
world  of  art,  it  seems  to  me  as  though  my 
daisy  field  would  hold  out  against  his  talk 
awhile,  at  least.  He  would  probably  try  to 
show  me  that  what  I  saw  in  my  field  was  in 
its  small  way,  what  I  should  see  if  I  were 
up  to  it,  in  all  true  works  of  art.  Perhaps 


Letters,  23 

I  should,  but  it  is  difficult  for  me  to  believe 
it.  Ruskin  is  somewhat  fastidious  in  his 
estimate  of  artists,  I  believe,  confines  his 
admiration  pretty  exclusively  to  Turner,  and 
yet  if  each  one  of  all,  or  a  half  of  Turner's 
pictures  has  been  as  much  to  him  as  some 
actual  scenes  I  have  hung  up  in  my  mind, 
are  to  me,  I  don't  wonder  at  his  much  talk 
about  Turner.  I  went  to  this  field  of  daisies 
a  fortnight  ago.  The  sweetbriar  is  abund 
ant  on  that  slope,  and  it  was  at  its  best,  and 
that  is  good  enough.  I  had  something  to 
say  about  summer  in  that  letter  referred  to, 
which  you  did  not  get.  We  were  in  it  then 
— right  in  the  bloom  of  it,  and  I  felt  it  for 
a  few  days  in  a  delightful  way,  in  all  its 
opulence  of  beauty  and  sweetness.  The 
delights  of  spring  made  up  chiefly  of  bud 
ding  crocuses  and  snow-drops,  and  a  few 
scattering  notes  of  the  bluebird,  seemed  a 
little  thin  and  chilly. 


24  Letters. 

August  7th,  1862. 
To  J.  D. 

I  have  been  spending  some  pleasant 
hours  during  the  past  week,  in  Arcadia — 
transported  thither  on  the  tones  of  a  flute, 
played  by  some  Yankee  boy  no  doubt,  in 
the  neighborhood,  but  it  came  to  my  ear, 
while  working  at  my  cutting-board,  from  the 
serene  heights  of  Arcadia,  and  from  the 
pipe  of  some  simple  shepherd  swain,  whose 
sheep  were  feeding  on  a  gentle  slope  below 
him,  all  bathed  in  the  sunlight  of  that  azure 
realm.  The  playing  was  simple,  rather 
weak  perhaps,  but  just  right  for  the  effect, 
and  it  floated  into  the  store,  amid  the  thou 
sand  sounds  that  make  up  the  din  of  the 
street,  but  the  serenity  of  my  shepherd  boy 
was  not  disturbed  by  the  din,  but  on  the 
contrary  was  rather  enhanced  thereby. 
"  Little  boy  blue,"  must,  I  think,  be  a  neigh 
bor  of  his.  I  have  a  great  admiration  for 
him.  The  purity  of  the  little  fellow,  as  I 
see  him  relieved  against  that  permanent 


Letters.  25 

azure  in  which  he  has  established  himself  in 
my  mind,  is  suggested  to  me  by  remember 
ing  the  pieces  of  snow-crust  you  threw  up 
against  the  sky,  in  one  of  those  winters  a 
long  while  ago,  on  the  old  Boston  turnpike. 
Do  you  remember?  Is  it  possible  that  you 
and  I  are  still  living  and  the  same  fellows? 
What  wandering  Jews  we  are — all  but  the 
Jews  !  Is  it  not  possible  that  we  have  o-0t 
snagged  on  these  shores  of  Time,  and  shall 
never  get  off  ? 


LYNN,  August  23d,  1863. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

The  day  is  a  good  one — as  good  as  I 
want,  thus  far  at  least.  It  is  true  it  is  morn 
ing  yet,  and  we  can't  always  tell  what  a 
half-day  may  bring  forth.  I  enjoy  being 
by  the  sea  again  very  much,  but  how  differ 
ent  the  feeling  inspired  by  it,  from  the 
inspiration  of  the  mountains.  As  I  stood 


26  Letters. 

by  it  yesterday,  I  was  reminded  of  looking 
through  the  large  end  of  a  spy-glass.  It 
dwarfed  all  my  petty  private  griefs  and 
follies,  sort  of  hushed  up  all  my  sins  in  its 
great  roar,  and  was  very  soothing  to  me. 
It  might  do  a  very  different  thing  at  another 
time,  when  my  mood  was  different,  though  I 
suspect  the  sea  is  too  large  for  my  moods, 
and  would  break  them  down,  or  rather 
drown  them.  As  we  sat  last  evening  out-of- 
doors,  during  the  silence  our  thoughts 
seemed  carried  away  as  'twere  by  the  under 
tow  of  the  sea,  and  it  made  our  small-talk 
seem  good,  though  our  words  were  trivial 
enough,  floating  only  on  the  surface.  I 
fancied  we  felt  the  depth  underneath  us  of 
this  sea,  on  which  we  are — playing,  if  not 
sailing,  and  our  chatting  seemed  to  me 
chastened  thereby,  and  made  as  good,  per 
haps,  as  sacred.  I  think  with  the  material, 
this  note  should  have  been  better,  but  you 
know  about  how  I  would  do  it,  if  I  could, 
and  you  know  also,  that  that  is  just  about 
the  way  I  can't  do  it. 


Letters.  27 

I  remember  a  morning  at  York;  the 
house  stood  high  and  commanded  a  wide 
look-off,  and  my  window  framed  a  strip  of 
sky  and  sea  and  earth,  which  I  could  see 
while  lying  on  my  bed ;  and  if  I  could  fitly 
describe  what  was  done  in  this  little  segment 

o 

of  mine  between  the  early  dawn  and  the 
perfected  day,  one  morning,  it  would  be 
pleasant  reading.  But  I  can  only  hint  of 
some  of  the  varied  and  many-colored  splen 
dors.  First,  a  chaotic  jumble  of  sea  and 
sky,  mist  and  fog,  neither  for  a  while  dis 
tinguishable  from  the  others,  through  which 
Boon  Island  light,  nine  miles  away,  strug 
gled  feebly  (this  seems  too  much  like  a  com 
position  but  we  must  go  on,  now)  ;  after 
awhile  I  could  just  discern  a  faint  light  on 
the  lower  part  of  this  mass,  and  a  little 
motion,  then  the  faintest  tinge  of  violet, 
changing  to  crimson.  Spectral  sails  make 
their  appearance,  and  move  slowly  athwart 
the  scene.  The  splendors  heighten  and  my 
strip  of  earth  is  illuminated  and  made  the 
most  intense  emerald  and  beautiful  beyond 


28  Letters. 

anybody's  description  ;  and  so  the  thing  goes 
on,  the  splendors  still  heightening  with  much 
moving  of  cloud-racks  until  finally  the  sun 
emerges  and  rests  his  chin  on  a  crimson 
liquid  orient.  And  it  is  day  and  my  strip 
of  glorified  earth  has  become  a  sheep  pasture, 
gnawed  to  the  bone  by  the  poor  sheep. 
And  the  landlord  appears  with  pails  of  water 
and  says,  "the  morning  begun  rather  foggy, 
but  I  guess  it  is  going  to  be  a  pleasant 
day." 


October  29th,  1864. 
To  J.  D. 

I  don't  know  whether  Bannister  is  still 
among  the  living.  I  mean  to  go  to  the  mill 
bye-and-bye,  when  the  bobolinks  get  there 
and  the  pitcher  plant  is  in  flower.  I  suppose 
vague  yearnings  are  beginning  to  stir  in 
some  of  those  birds,  who  are  now  stuffing 
themselves  with  rice  in  the  South,  for  that 
meadow.  It  is  pleasant  to  think  of  their 


Letters.  29 

songs  mingling  with  the  rumble  and  clatter 
of  that  unworldly  mill,  which  runs  to  poetry, 
principally  I  should  say,  or  rather  painting. 
I  presume  the  miller  thinks  he  is  the  only 
one  who  tends  it,  but  how  lovingly  the 
heavens  embrace  it,  as  it  sits  in  the  motherly 
lap  of  Dame  Nature.  All  the  lovely  sights 
and  sounds  are  made  for  it,  for  it  the  birds 
and  insects  sing  and  buzz  and  hum  and  whirr, 
and  for  it  the  cloud  shadows  are  blown  across 
that  little  meadow,  and  the  flowers  are  blown 
in  it,  and  with  what  an  impressive  silence  it 
stands  amid  all  this  beauty  as  if  filled  with 
a  great  peace,  more  than  that,  with  ecstasy. 
It  looks  to  me  as  though  it  felt  itself  in 
loving  hands  always,  in  spite  of  all  that's 
said  about  the  pitiless  peltings  of  storms. 


1867. 

Our  business  is  very  light  these  days— 
we  have  just  set  up  a  new  kitten  or  rather 
kitlet  in  the  store;  she  is  a  pretty  little 


30  Letters. 

thing,  a  stranger  among  strangers,  with  an 
outfit  of  a  cheap  cotton  string  'round  her 
neck,  with  no  milk  or  meat  or  no  means  of 
getting  anv,  that  she  knows  of  and  vet  easily 

o  «-     '  •/  »/ 

beguiled  into  playing  with  anything  that 
offers,  the  great  responsibilities  of  cathood 
have  not  dawned  upon  her  as  yet,  the 
anxieties  of  litters  of  kittens,  the  awful  fits 
that  may  fling  her  on  all  sides  of  the  room 
at  the  same  instant,  all  these  things  a  wise 
Providence  hides  from  her  and  she  plays 
with  as  little  thought  of  the  morrow  as  the 
lilies  which  neither  toil  or  spin. — It  is  early 
enough  to  think  of  the  evils  when  they 
come. 


September  5th,  1867. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  am  in  Lynn,  bodily,  at  least,  but  I 
have  been  reading  Dante's  Inferno,  or  a  few 
Cantos  of  it,  and  what  with  Longfellow's 
notes  and  the  fact  of  its  having  been  so  much 


Letters.  31 

as  I  hear  it  has  been,  and  for  aught  I  know 
still  is,  to  Longfellow,  I  have  been  much  in 
terested  in  it,  and  the  two  days  past  have 
been  much  colored  by  it.  My  interest  is  in 
the  accessories  rather  than  in  the  work  itself. 
But  while  walking  on  the  road  to  Salern  this 
morning,  the  golden-rods,  milk- weeds  and 
all  the  dear  old  things  which  go  with  them, 
which  bordered  the  road,  soon  set  me  con 
trasting  this  world  that  Longfellow  had  been 
living  in,  with  Thoreau's  and  Thoreau's 
poke-wTeed,  bending  over  with  its  rich 
burden  seemed  more  juicely  and  healthily 
interesting,  than  Dante's  dried  phantoms, 
bobbing  up  and  down,  or  blown  about  hither 
and  thither  forever.  1  am  suspicious  that 
it  is  the  forever  or  almost  forever  which 
pertains  to  these  ghosts,  which  makes  their 
doings  poetic  or  dramatic  or  both. 


September  12th,  1867. 
To  L.  P.  II. 

Another  mile-stone,  in  my  life's  jour 
ney,  I  am  passing  to-day  —  the  fifty-sixth. 


32  Letters. 

Celebrated  it  by  walking  to  a  hill  beyond 
Auburn,  where  I  went  the  day  I  was  fifty- 
one.  I  went  in  the  afternoon,  and  it  was 
a  pretty  afternoonish  afternoon  with  me. 
When  coming  down,  I  noticed  my  shadow 
stretched  out  very  long.  Pleasant  to  me 
was  the  thought  that  it  "pointed  towards 
the  morning."  The  golden-rods  bordered 
my  walk  nearly  all  the  way,  and  were  a 
great  delight  to  me.  I  brought  home  my 
hands  full  of  them,  and  purple  and  white 
asters.  I  wish  I  could  send  them  to  you. 
You  are  entitled  to  them,  for  your  love 
for  these  things  enhances  their  value  for 
me.  Where  are  you  to-night?  Does  this 
beautiful  moonlight,  that  shines  here  to 
night,  gild  the  sea  through  which  you  are 
hurrying?  How  strange  to  think  of  the 
speck  your  craft  is,  away  off  in  the  moon 
light  on  the  boundless  ocean,  and  that  you 
and  Susie  are  in  it,  with  strangers  !  I  hope 
you  are  having  a  prosperous  voyage.  It 
does  seem  as  if  the  sea  might  be  quiet  and 
behave  itself  while  you  are  going  over. 


Letters.  33 

You  look  to  my  mind's  eye,  as  I  see  you 
now,  away  off  on  the  horizon,  in  the  moon 
light,  as  though  nothing  could  happen  to 
you.  If  pictures  could  only  be  photographed 
from  the  imagination,  I  should  go  immedi 
ately  and  sit  for  you.  It  seems  strange  to 
have  only  little  things  of  which  to  write  to 
you,  so  faraway,  but  I  have  no  large  ones. 
I  don't  believe  you  will  find  anything  so  ab 
sorbingly  interesting  to  you,  in  that  foreign 
land,  but  you  could  stop  with  pleasure  to 
read  a  letter,  about  even  the  poorest  of  our 
old  picnic  places,  if  it  only  half  did  justice 
to  it.  I  doubt  not  you  will  find  many  inter 
esting  things  off  there,  but  the}'  won't  bear 
comparison,  of  course,  with  our  Heron  at 
Long  Pond,  including  surroundings.  And 
then  that  jingling,  icy  morning  on  Millstone 
Hill  !  Lapse  of  time  does  not  diminish,  but 
rather  increases,  the  glory  of  that  morning. 
You  must  come  back  in  season  for  next  sum 
mer's  picnics,  even  if  you  do  a  little  less  of 
the  Nile,  or  leave  out  a  pyramid  or  two. 
By  way  of  speculation  why  not  bring  home 


34  Letters. 

one  of  the  smaller  pyramids,  and  exhibit  on 
Boston  Common  ?  I  think  with  the  aid  of 
a  band  of  music  the  thing  would  have  quite 
a  run. 


1868. 

Ten  or  fifteen  years  are  as  many  as  I 
count  upon.  Time  has  dealt  as  gently  with 
me,  as  with  most,  I  think ;  once  I  had  too 
many  gray  hairs,  but  I  haven't  now,  on  the 
contrary,  rather  too  few  !  I  see  the  sun  rise 
less  often  than  I  used  to,  and  I  fear  think 
less  of  the  day  it  makes,  after  it  has  risen, 
and  I  look  forward,  with  a  little  less  antici 
pation  to  the  spring ;  but  I  remember  one 
or  two  sunrises  and  a  spring  in  which  the 
life  tide  or  sap  that  floods  everything,  found 
its  way  and  crept  up  into  the  little  private 
rill  that  fed  me,  and  entranced  me  with  the 
ever  new  wonder  and  delight. 


Letters.  35 

1869. 

Your  despairing  note  found  me  in  quite 
a  different  mood  from  that  in  which  yours 
was  written,  but  for  a  time  it  somewhat 
changed  my  own,  and  I  found  myself  enter 
taining  the  same  questionings;  that  was 
yesterday  ;  to-day  the  idea  of  speculating 
whether  a  beneficent  or  a  malignant  power 
has  control  over  the  universe  seems  ridicu 
lous,  but  if  I  should  bring  to  bear  the  best 
arguments  or  reasons  for  the  faith  that  is  in 

o 

me,  the  best  I  mean  to  address  to  your  in 
tellect,  I  fear  they  would  but  confirm  you 
in  your  despair.  It  looks  dark  to  me  ahead 
sometimes,  but  perhaps  we  are  traversing  a 
desolate  region  of  life's  journey,  but  it 
would  not  be  a  journey  without  deserts  and 
desolation  ;  let  us  not  doubt  but  we  shall 
yet  find  an  outlet  into  fairer  regions ;  the 
impossibility  of  imagining  how  the  thing 
is  to  be  done,  is  of  course,  necessary  to  give 
depth  to  the  desolation  ;  I  usually  feel  in 
sympathy  with  these  lines  of  Thoreau's  : 


36  Letters. 

' '  I  will  not  doubt  the  love  untold 

Which  not  my  worth  or  want  have  bought, 
Which  wooed  me  young  and  wooes  me  old, 
And  to  this  evening  hath  me  brought." 


The  loss  of  our  darling  baby  has  awa 
kened  no  distrust  of  this  love  in  either  of 
us ;  she  was  a  charming  little  creature  and 
had  identified  herself  with  our  lives  so  com 
pletely,  that  everything  speaks  to  us  contin 
ually  of  her  now  !  It  was  a  great  thing  to 
have  her  with  us  so  long  and  her  going  even 
enhanced  and  deepened  the  beauty  of  the 
summer  days  in  which  she  was  withdrawing 
from  us,  and  made  them  in  the  best  way 
memorable.  It  is  my  heart's  persuasion  that 
such  intelligence,  beauty  and  sweetness  can 
not  be  lost,  to  what  purpose  else  does  the 
universe  stand  ?  Don't  imagine  God's  ways 
can't  be  vindicated,  because  I  don't  know 
how  to  do  it,  but  I  do  believe  the  world  is 
going  well  for  all  concerned. 


Letters.  37 

1869. 

I  wish  I  had  "  new  thoughts  and  surer 
hopes "  to  tell  you  of.  I  have  moments, 
from  time  to  time,  in  which  life  seems  very 
rich,  and  I  thank  God,  I  have  arrived  on 
the  shores  of  being,  in  spite  of  the  occa 
sional  feeling-  I  have  that  my  life  is  a  failure. 
But  probably  the  case  is  not  so  bad  as  it 
seems.  If  we  could  only  make  our  lives 
more  tragic,  if  tragic  they  must  be,  and  not 
this  half  tragic,  half  comic.  "  If,"  as  Tho- 
reau  says,  "  we  can't  sing  of  faith  and  hope 
let  us  sing  of  our  despair."  Be  so  in  earnest 
in  besieging  the  citadel  of  God  that  our 
failure  can  be  charged  to  fate ;  there  would 
be  something  respectable  in  that. 


To  J.  D. 

I  have  been  walking  on  the  Grafton 
road.  The  same  old  things  are  being  done 
over  again  that  we  have  seen  together  so 


38  Letters. 

many  times.  There  has  been  a  shower  this 
afternoon,  which  brings  out  much  fragrance, 
especially  that  of  the  vernal  grass.  The 
bobolink,  a  trifle  subdued,  perhaps,  still 
holds  forth  with  vivacity.  This  is  the  time 
of  day  for  the  robin,  especially  after  a 
shower,  and  he  is  at  it.  I  heard  a  lark 
also.  You  translated  his  song  for  me  once. 
The  grass  is  about  ready  for  the  scythe ; 
buttercups  and  daises,  and  all  the  pretty 
things  that  go  with  them,  are  at  their  best 
now.  How  little  I  have  seen  of  these 
things  this  spring,  some  of  which  are  al 
ready  going  to  seed.  There  is  a  gentle 
reproof  in  their  faces,  I  fancy,  as  they  look 
into  mine,  that  is  a  little  saddening  to  me, 
but  they  look  in  good  spirits,  tossing  their 
blossoms  in  a  pleasant  breeze. 


August  1st,  1869. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

These  are  great  summer  days.     They 
stir  in  me  the  migratory  blood.     I  feel  like 


Letters.  39 

walking  away  off,  over  the  edge  of  the 
world.  If  you  were  here  I  should  be  after 
you  and  propose  going  southwest  in  spite 
of  all  the  Brookfields  we  should  have  to  go 
through.  I  am  well  nigh  smothered  with 
the  glories  heaped  upon  me  in  such  large 
profusion.  Who  is  sufficient  for  these 
things ?  The  few  drops  I  get  of  this  great 
draught  held  to  my  lips,  are  so  petty  in 
comparison  with  that  which  spills  over,  that 
it  all  seems  wasted  on  me. 

I  walked  awhile  on  the  Providence 
railroad  this  morning;  left  it  this  side  of 
Quinsigamond  village,  and  went  over  the 
hill  on  the  left,  sat  on  the  top  and  read  some 
in  Wordsworth's  Excursion,  which  I  have 
tried  several  times  before  with  small  success. 
I  was  much  more  interested  in  the  golden- 
rods  by  the  side  of  the  railroad,  which  are 
just  opening  now,  and  the  milk-weeds, 
clematis,  sumach  and  poke-weed,  of  which  I 
saw  some  fine  specimens, — the  berries  are 
green  yet.  These  flowers  and  berries  are 
worth  more  to  me  than  the  words  and  leaves 


40  Letters. 

of  Wordsworth.  I  fancied  while  reading 
that  all  the  ivords  worth  reading,  in  the  Ex 
cursion,  in  such  a  day  and  place,  might  have 
been  compressed  into  a  smaller  volume. 
The  play  on  the  name  did  not  enter  my  head 
until  just  before  I  wrote  it. 


November  19th,  1869. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  have  been  walking  to-day  over  the 
Charlton  road,  which  goes  up  through  the 
woods  up  into  the  sky.  I  left  the  road  when 
I  got  to  the  top,  and  climbed  another  hill,  a 
little  to  the  right,  from  which  I  had  a  fine 
view.  This  last  hill  I  think  we  visited  to 
gether  once.  It  seems  to  me  it  was  late  in 
the  afternoon,  in  the  twilight,  when  we 
reached  there.  There  was  a  mysterious 
arrangement  of  rocks,  which  we  found  on 
our  way  up,  which  must  have  been  made  a 
long  time  ago,  and  that  reminded  me,  and 


Letters.  41 

perhaps  you,  of  Stonehenge.  It  is  possible 
the  association  of  twilight  with  the  place  is 
in  consequence  of  the  dark  thoughts  sug 
gested  by  Stonehenge  and  the  Druids.  From 
there,  I  struck  off  east,  into  a  road  that  led 
me  off  by  the  little  house  of  the  Eno-Hsh 

O 

Chartist,  whom  you  and  I  visited  once. 
There  was  the  same  utter  lack  of  anything 
done  for  ornament  as  when  we  were  there. 
I  saw  four  blue  jays  in  the  edge  of  the  woods. 
At  the  bottom  of  the  hill,  just  beyond  the 
dilapidated  old  house,  an  old  milk-can 
swings  in  the  wind,  hung  to  the  Avell-sweep 
belonging  to  the  old  house.  This  put  on 
the  finishing  touch  for  shiftlessness,  and  set 
me  thinking  of  my  own.  But  seeing  the 
bluejays  soon  after,  I  was  comforted  with 
the  thought  that  though  my  farm  if  I  had 
one  might  run  down,  I  should  still  have  a 
little  stock  in  the  bluejays.  This  blue  jay 
and  wild  goose  and  chickadee,  etc.,  stock, 
though  it  is  safe  we  hope,  is  yet  very  varia 
ble.  There  are  times,  lots  of  them,  when 
we  can't  .seem  to  realize  much  from  them. 


42  Letters. 

I  get  dividends  but  seldom,  these  days. 
Still  I  believe  in  that  kind  of  stock.  I  feel 
as  though  my  property  in  the  wild  geese 
was  less  likely  to  take  to  itself  wings  and 
fly  away  than  that  in  my  house  and  stove. 
But  I  am  afraid  it  may  be  possible  to  run 
out  these  upland  farms  as  well  as  the  low 
land  ones. 


December  30th,  1869. 
To  E.  H.  R. 

I  have  been  hearing  the  same  tune  in 
the  streets  to-day,  and  from  the  same  hand- 
organ,  I  think,  that  we  heard  together  one 
day  nearly  opposite  KettelPs  hat  store.  Do 
you  remember?  There  is  immense  quantity 
of  tone  to  the  instrument,  and  the  first  strain 
of  this  particular  tune  is  enough  to  lift  all 
Main  street  into  another  world, — a  world, 
Oh  !  how  far  away  from  Kettell's  hat  store  ! 
I  wonder  if  we  shall  ever  spend  much  time 


Letters.  43 

in  that  world?  Ever  get  settled  there ?  Any 
peep  we  chance  to  get  into  it  from  this,  is 
very  unsettling  to  things  in  this.  I  have 
more  than  once  looked  about  after  hearing 
this  tune  to  see  if  the  people  in  the  street 
were  going  to  keep  on,  and  do  their  errands 
and  return  to  their  stores  and  homes  ao-ain. 


January  6th,  1870. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  am  sorry  to  have  to  inform  you  of  the 
death  of  our  friend,  Edward  Hamilton.  His 
death  comes  very  near  to  me  ;  I  admired  him 
long  before  I  became  acquainted  with  him. 
My  life  in  Worcester  seems  infinitely  long 
when  I  think  of  it,  with  reference  to  him. 
He  sat  centuries  in  our  store,  beginning  with 
the  one  down  street,  with  his  violin  in  his 
hands,  and  some  century  or  two  since  the 
violin  was  laid  aside.  How  tenderly  he 
treated  me,  through  those  years  of  my  youth, 
and  of  my  intensest  greenness,  rubbing  it  off 


44  Letters. 

occasionally  a  little,  but  in  such  a  delicate 
way  that  it  did  not  hurt.  His  funeral  was  at 
the  Church  of  the  Unity,  and  two  of  his 
compositions  were  sung,  one  of  which 
seemed  to  me  great,  among  a  few  of  the 
great  things  in  that  line.  The  music  is  set 
to  the  words,  "The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd." 
The  bass  solo,  "When  I  walk  through  the 
valley  and  shadow  of  death,"  is  very  fine. 
I  wish  I  could  tell  him  I  never  heard  any 
thing  better  of  the  kind,  and  I  wish  also  I 
could  tell  him  how  deeply  his  death  is  felt, 
and  by  how  many,  for  he  was  much  de 
pressed  during  his  sickness,  and  thought  he 
had  few  friends.  "  If  a  man  die,"  shall  we 
see  him  again  ? 


August  1st,  1870. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

Can't  you  drop  one  or  two  countries  out 
of  your  programme  and  come  home  sooner  ? 
Will  not  the  war  there  shorten  your  stay? 


Letters.  45 

I  hope  you  will  not  get  so  much  interested 
as  to  enlist.  I  don't  believe  you  will ;  you 
learned  in  our  war  how  not  to  enlist.  If  Z 
had  been  as  young  as  you,  what  do  you  think 
would  have  kept  me  back  ?  There  is  a  good 
deal  of  your  journeying  in  this  letter  from 
Dresden.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  you  in 
the  letter,  which  is  more  interesting  to  me 
than  the  places  and  things  you  write  of.  I 
can  however,  see  with  what  silent  veneration 
I  should  stand  with  you  at  Tasso's  tomb 
stone,  but  I  have  no  recollection  of  any  line 
of  his  writing  that  I  ever  read,  if  indeed  I 
ever  read  any.  1  don't  recollect  of  your 
ever  having  quoted  him  to  me,  very  often, 
— not  half  so  often  as  Thoreau.  Suppose  you 
drop  the  past  now  and  look  at  the  present. 
Do  not  be  driven  by  that  merciless  sense  of 
duty  which  rides  all  travelers,  but  walk 
about  there  at  your  ease,  and  original  man, 
gracefully  condescending,  when  it  comes  in 
your  way,  to  attend  to  the  trivial  history 
that  has  been  enacted  there.  That's  the  way 
to  travel  through  a  country.  Such  traveling 


46  Letters. 

as  that,  would  bury  those  old  graves,  thus 
saving  us  the  trouble  of  hunting  up  the  hole, 
or  where  the  hole  was,  in  which  Tasso  was 
never  put.  Still  I  would  walk  with  you 
some  ways  to  see  Tasso's  tomb  this  morning. 
The  blackberry  vines  growing  about  it,  the 
subdued  chirp  of  the  crickets,  enhancing  the 
silence,  the  subdued  sunlight  over  all,  and 
you  would  make  the  place  seem  very  attrac 
tive  to  me.  All  this,  on  the  supposition  that 
there  is  a  pretended,  at  least,  tomb  of  Tasso, 
though  for  the  use  I  have  been  making  of 
him,  it  is  of  small  consequence  whether  there 
is  any  tomb,  or  indeed,  whether  there  was 
any  Tasso. 


Februur;/  16th,  1870. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

The  great  yellow  moon  has  just  risen. 
On  opening  our  front  door  just  now,  it 
looked  me  full  in  the  face,  and  into  a 
thoughtful  mood.  What  a  reminder  it  is, 


Letters.  47 

of  our  higher,  our  infinite  relations.  What 
gentle  reproof  of  any  meanness,  or  worldli- 
ness  there  may  be  in  us,  in  its  open  look. 
How  like  to  that  of  music,  And  what  a 
miracle  it  is !  Away  across  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  miles  of  space  conies  this 
golden  light,  and  gilds  not  only  our  OAVH 
and  our  neighbor's  houses  and  fences,  but 
one  side  of  our  planet.  Think  of  the  thou 
sand  miles  of  wild  lonely  sea  coast,  flashing 
with  the  golden  light,  all  through  the  night. 
Some  inch  or  two  of  snow  fell  last  night, 
after  it  had  been  raining,  and  the  trees  look 
like  great  white  corals.  Looking  at  them 
from  our  window  against  the  blue  sky, 
Alice  the  while  playing  on  the  piano  some 
thing  quite  inspiring  to  me,  "  set  me  up " 
some,  and  I  walked  down  to  the  store  to  the 

hio-h  measure  of  the  music,  and  the  faces  in 
o 

the  street  looked  to  me  as  though  the  music 
and  beauty  had  reached  them  too,  and  my 
"how  fare  ye?"  as  I  passed  them,  had  a 
little  more  depth  than  I  had  been  wont  to 
put  into  it. 


48  Letters. 

September  5th,  1870. 
To  J.  D. 

Here  I  am,  under  a  chestnut  tree  by  the 
side  of  North  Pond,  a  beautiful  blue  sky 
over  me  with  heavy  clouds  full  of  light.  A 
kingfisher  had  just  circled  round  me,  ambi 
tious  of  being  mentioned  in  this  note,  per 
haps.  The  pond  is  so  low  that  I  have  just 
walked  across  a  part  of  its  bed.  There  are 
some  interesting  roots  of  large  trees,  com 
pletely  uprooted,  it  is  very  strange  to  me 
how,  as  there  is  so  little  current,  if  any. 
Thistledown  shining  in  the  sunlight  is  sail 
ing  by  me.  Indeed,  a  great  deal  is  going 
on,  in  a  thistle  close  by  ;  a  splendid  butter 
fly  has  been  steadily  piercing  with  his  long 
proboscis,  into  the  heart  of  the  flower, 
nearly  an  hour,  bumble-bees  shoot  in  like 
bullets  close  by  him,  but  there  is  no  quar 
reling.  They  work  as  though  they  were  in 
a  great  hurry.  I  left  the  butterfly  working 
on  the  thistle  when  I  came  away. 


Letter  x,  451 

1871. 

This  was  a  bright  morn  ing,  with  a  high 
sounding  wind  to  it ;  and  inspired  by  the 
light  and  sound,  I  started  for  a  long  walk, 
out  to  Daniel  Heywood's,  beyond  the  Poor 
Farm.  I  wanted  to  talk  with  him  about 
poor  old  Watch,  whose  declining  days  he 
smoothed  with  such  tender  care,  minister 
ing  to  his  wants  and  comfort  in  his  later 
years,  his  years  of  obesity  and  rheumatism, 
while  lying  on  the  door-stone  and  looking 
off  with  bleared  eyes  over  the  pleasant 
meadows,  and  dreaming  of  game,  which,  an 
chored  as  he  was  by  rheumatism,  he  could  no 
longer  follow  except  in  dreams.  In  due 
time,  after  the  final  wag  of  that  tail  which 
in  all  its  vibrations  had  been  such  a  faithful 
indicator  of  the  feelings  of  its  possessor,  he 
was  carefully  buried  in  a  pleasant  spot,  laid 
in  his  sandy  grave  by  loving  hands ;  he 
earned  human  sympathy,  and  it  is  pleasant 
to  know  he  had  it.  I  hope  Watch  is  im 
mortal  and  that  I  shall  see  him  again,  for 
4 


50  Letters. 

I  want  him  to  know  that  my  jumping  upon 
him  one  day  in  crossing  the  street  was  acci 
dental,  for  I  came  near  breaking  his  back  ; 
he  undoubtedly  thought  I  meant  to  do  it, 
and  for  a  long  time  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  me ;  if  I  see  him  again,  I  will  try  and 
clear  that  matter  up  with  him  ;  if  I  should 
find  him  with  a  spiritual  body,  I  wonder 
whether  his  spiritual  tail  will  be  modeled 
after  his  original  tail,  or  after  the  honest 
but  somewhat  ungraceful  stump  he  so  vigor 
ously  wagged  the  greater  part  of  his  earthly 
life  !  I  suspect,  however,  we  shall  have  to 
wait  awhile  before  we  can  know ;  with  all 
the  table  tippings,  I  still  doubt  if  there  are 
any  tell-tales  on  the  other  side,  so  whether 
he  will  be  cur-tailed  or  re-tailed  there,  we 
can  only  guess  at  now,  but  I  believe  he 
may  feel  sure  it  will  be  well  with  him 
for  his  faithfulness  will  surely  not  go  un 
rewarded. 


Letters.  51 

May  12th,  1871. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

The  beauty  is  piled  thickly  about  us 
these  days.  The  chance  glimpses  I  have 
had  of  it,  from  our  east  chamber  window, 
these  last  few  mornings  over  the  pear  trees, 
filled  with  blossoms  and  birds'  songs,  and 
sparkling  dew,  are  rather  inspiring.  Is  not 
this  the  most  valuable  as  well  as  the  finest 
crop  the  trees  can  yield,  even  if  every  blos 
som  should  culminate  in  a  pear?  And  is 
this,  or  is  it  not,  a  consoling  reflection  to  a 
man  edging  on  close  to  sixty,  who  as  yet 
shows  scanty  sign  of  fruit.  But  I  am  too 
young  yet  to  be  good  for  anything,  accord 
ing  to  somebody'-s  (whose?)  opinion  you 
were  telling  me  about.  I  wonder  what  I 
shall  be  good  for  when  I  am  old  enough. 
A  funeral  did  I  hear  you  think?  Well, 
that  is  something.  But  to  make  a  first-rate 
funeral, — to  make  one's  self  felt  in  a  good 
deep  way  in  his  death, — it  seems  necessary 
he  should  have  been  good  for  something  in 
his  life. 


52  Letters. 

1872. 

A  light  snow  fell  last  night.  The  hills 
of  the  Tataesset  range  look  interesting,  but 
I  have  lighted  a  cigar  and  I  suspect  the  three 
little  springs  high  up  on  said  hill  and  the 
berries  of  the  wild  rose  will  have  to  get 
along  without  me,  as  they  can.  Those  ber 
ries,  by  the  way,  have  a  great  charm  for  me, 
heightened  by  the  fact,  that  they  are  of  no 
use  but  to  look  at ;  the  color  and  warmth 
they  contribute  to  the  places  where  they 
grow,  you  have  noticed.  The  shine  of  these 
berries  in  a  cold  winter's  sun,  with  the  note 
of  the  chickadee,  I  recollect  to  have  seen  and 
heard  on  the  side  of  that  hill  many  years 
ago,  but  I  can't  tell  much  about  it. 


January  7th,  1872. 
To  E.  H.  R. 

I  have  just  been  lifted  up  by  listening 
to  one  of  Beethoven's  great  compositions — 


Letters.  53 

Adelaide — oh  !  what  a  beautiful  thing  it  is, 
and  if  ears  continue  to  be  constructed  like 
ours,  it  must  be  a  "joy  forever."  How 
vividly  it  brings  back  the  days  of  my  youth 
and  those  of  the  beautiful  youth  of  my 
friend,  Samuel  Jennison,  who  lived  for 
years  in  these  great  compositions,  and  played 
them  for  me,  better  than  any  one.  With 
what  a  mild  lustre  shine  out  some  of  those 
beautiful  spring  days  spent  with  him  and  his 
music. 


SUNDAY,  June  30th,  1872. 
To  J.  D. 

The  weather  is  too  hot  to  think  of  walk 
ing,  and  the  next  best  thing  is  reading  in 
Thoreau's  journal,  the  corresponding  dates 
of  the  year  eighteen  fifty-four.  It  is  full  of 
observation,  mostly  of  birds  and  flowers. 
It  keeps  me  posted,  as  to  what  is  going  on, 
and  it  is  pleasant  to  know  what  is  doing,  if 


54  Letters. 

we  don't  see  it.  That  the  pontideria,  for 
instance,  is  now  in  flower,  and  that  the  blue 
dragon-flies  are  darting  among  the  blue 
spikes,  making  a  "gala-day"  of  every  one 
of  these  days.  And  below  the  water  surface 
there  are  the  pickerel  as  still  as  the  dragon 
fly  when  he  is  not  darting. 

You  will  be  sorry  to  hear  the  trees  are 
being  cut  down  about  the  old  Hermitage. 
It  looks  as  though  there  was  to  be  thorough 
work  made  in  cutting  away  these  woods. 
As  I  walked  there  the  other  day,  I  fell  to 
thinking  of  other  days,  of  a  little  bed  of 
wind  flowers  we  once  saw  there,  shivering 
in  a  chilly  evening,  near  by  where  the  cut 
ting  is  now  going  on,  and  I  felt  rather  old 
during  the  rest  of  that  walk,  and  the  thing 
is  to  grow  worse  and  worse,  up  to  a  certain 
point.  It  is  consoling  to  think  that  this 
matter  of  old  age  is  not  chronic,  and  that 
after  a  certain  crisis,  we  may  come  out  as 
young  as  any  of  them. 

I  have  been  lately  reading  a  little  of  a 
German  Philosopher,  a  pessimist,  who  thinks 


Letters.  55 

the  world  is  as  bad  as  it  can  be ;  that  we 
couldn't  exist  if  things  were  any  worse. 

Did  this  philosopher  ever  have  a  morning 
with  apple-blossoms  and  bobolinks?  It 
seems  to  me  in  his  path  he  must  have  had 
some  trying  mornings  of  that  sort.  If  I 
could  have  had  him  at  Bannister's  mill  when 
the  pitcher-plant  was  in  flower  and  other 
flowers  which  grow  with  them  there.  --A 
morning  with  swift  moving  clouds,  filled 
with  light,  flecking  that  little  meadow  with 
their  shadows ;  the  breeze  fragrant  with 
vernal  grass,  the  sound  of  the  water-fall, 
the  note  of  the  bluejay,  etc.,  etc.,  what  a 
miserable  time  he  would  have  had  of  it,-— 
that  is  if  he  had  consented  to  let  up  in  the 
rigor  °f  h^  philosophy. 


July  7th,  1872. 

To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  expect  to  go  with  you  next  Saturday 
to  Chester.     I  am  sorry  the  time  for  going 


56  Letters. 

is  postponed,  for  the  bloom  of  summer  is 
losing  its  freshness  every  day.  Still,  this  is 
midsummer,  and  in  spite  of  the  slight  sense 
of  repletion  in  its  luxuriance — its  honeyed 
sweetness  gives,  I  like  it.  It  is  the  birth- 
time  of  a  world  of  moths,  and  millers,  and 
insects  of  all  sorts  ;  a  time  when  Puck  and 
his  tribe  (of  which  I  know  but  little,  but  I 
know  something  of  the  feeling  which  gave 
them  birth)  hold  high  carnival.  It  has  been 
too  hot  to  walk  much,  and  indeed,  I  have 
not  had  much  opportunity.  I  have  kept 
myself  posted  a  little  as  to  what  is  doing  by 
reading  Thoreau's  journal.  I  see  that  the 
clover  heads  have  begun  to  brown,  or  did 
eighteen  years  ago  at  this  date,  and  I  have 
not  had  a  sniff  from  a  clover  field  this  year. 
Speaking  of  k'  upland  farms,"  this  is  getting 
to  be  about  the  season  in  our  lives,  when  we 
ought  to  be  sending  down  from  them  great 
wagon-loads  of  produce,  piled  so  high  that 
the  wagons  would  creak  and  groan  under 
them,  and  I  doubt  not  you  are  doing  so,  but 
I  have  never  worked  a  day  on  that  farm.  I 


Letters.  57 

have  done  a  little  fancy  gardening,  but  in 
such  a  slovenly  way,  that  it  has  all  run  to 
weeds  and  yields  nothing.  For  me  to  make 
any  allusion  to  having  a  garden,  much  more 
a  farm,  is  a  joke,  but  too  serious  an  one  to 
be  funny.  Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  the 
case  may  not  be  so  forlorn  as  I  have  pic 
tured  it. 


September  13th,  1812. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

Another  mile-stone  passed.  Sixty-one 
times  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days  ! 
The  event  was  celebrated  last  evening:  at 

O 

our  house  with  flowers,  a  birthday  cake  and 
a  little  in  the  wajr  of  literature  by  Albert 
and  Will.  My  presents  were  flowers.  One 
splendid  great  two-story  bouquet  made  prin 
cipally  of  wild  flowers,  golden-rod,  purple 
and  white  asters  and  clematis.  It  is  mag 
nificent,  and  the  house  is  full  of  smaller 
bouquets,  flowers  and  smiles — smiles  full  of 


58  Letters. 

tenderness,  and  slight  mention  of  the  pre 
cise  number  of  years  the  day  brought  round. 
We  thought  of  sixty-one,  and  talked  of 
other  things.  It  is  all  well  enough  to  have 
birthdays  in  early  life,  but  after  sixty,  I 
think  the  thing  might  about  as  well  be 
hushed  up.  If  one  had  made  the  best  pos 
sible  use  of  the  sixty  years,  and  so  made 
them  seem  short  for  the  immense  burden  of 
golden  fruit  he  was  bending  under,  then  the 

case  would  be different.    Well,  perhaps 

there  is  some  way  of  making  that  which 
seems  sometimes  to  us  utter  failure,  a  sort 
of  success.  The  great  disadvantage  we 
humans  labor  under,  is  beginning  life  young, 
without  experience.  If  we  could  only  begin 
at  the  other  end — begin  at  seventy,  and  live 
the  other  way,  how  beautifully  we  could 
have  lived,  and  what  babies  we  should  have 
ended  with.  But  nature  didn't  arrange  it 
so,  perhaps  couldn't,  and  so  we  begin  doing 
everything  we  ought  not  to  do  too  much, 
and  everything  we  ought  to  do,  too  little, 
until  we  find  we  have  made  a  botch  of  what 


Letters.  59 

might  have  been  a  success,  if  we  had  not 
been  born  so  young  ! 


December  1st,  1873. 
To 

Alice  has  been  playing  a  composition 
of  Hummel's  which  I  like  very  much  ;  very 
grand  and  inspiring  it  is.  Passages  in 
some  of  these  great  compositions,  seldom 
fail  to  lift  me  from  a  low  mood,  and  often 
instantly  change  what  was  a  moment  before 
an  opaque,  muddy  tumble-bug's  ball,  on 
which  we  were  crawling,  into  a  shining 
sphere,  bathed  in  light,  cushioned  in  air  and 
whirling  off  with  us  amid  the  stars. 

o 


January  24th,  1873. 
To  M.  G. 

"  And  old  men  shall  dream  dreams." 
One  might  ask,  naturally,  what  else  should 
they  dream?     But  my  object  in  writing  the 


60  Letters. 

above,  was  not  to  find  fault  with  it,  but  by 
way  of  preface  to  something  I  thought  of 
trying  to  say  about  mine  last  night.  How 
different  this  cold,  drifting  snow-storm  into 
which  I  awoke  this  morning,  from  the  luxu 
riant  summer  grasses  and  flowers  I  had  been 
wading  through  in  my  dream.  It  was  one 
of  those  dreams  in  which  everything  is  sub 
limed,  especially  vegetation.  So  enhanced 
is  the  beauty  of  everything,  that  a  real  rose 
is  no  match  for  the  meanest  weed,  and  the 
delicious  golden  light  makes  the  common 
sun-light  a  cheap  affair.  The  child-like  in 
nocence  in  which  I  live,  move  and  have  my 
being,  in  all  this  beauty  and  grandeur,  is 
pleasant  to  remember.  The  dream  I  had  of 
you  standing  at  the  well,  was  of  the  same 
character.  No  picture  in  the  world,  it  seems 
to  me,  would  be  half  as  much  to  me  as  is 
this  one  of  you  (and  how  distinctly  I  see  you 
now)  standing  by  that  well.  The  charm, 
however,  was  not  all  centered  in  you,  though 
you  were  the  central  figure ;  but  the  whole 
scenery  of  the  dream  partook  of  it.  No 


Letters.  61 

bloodless  angel  you,  as  you  stood  there,  but 
real  flesh  and  blood,  full  of  ruddy  health, 
and  such  rich,  warm  color.  The  back 
ground,  the  eastern  horizon  a  little  after 
dawn,  was  not  too  brilliant  for  you.  You 
have  such  dreams  and  could  tell  them. 
Why  don't  you?  For  awhile  after  one  of 
them  everything  else  seems  comparatively 
uninteresting. 


November  16th,  1873. 

To  J.  D. 

How  different  this  world  looks  on  dif 
ferent  days.  Under  this  stainless  blue  sky, 
a  laro-e  tract  of  which  T  can  see  from  the 
window  at  which  I  am  sitting,  writing  and 
at  the  same  time  listening  to  Alice  playing 
one  of  Beethoven's  Sonatas,  the  world  seems 
about  as  interesting  a  world  as  one  could 
reasonably  ask  for. 

I  walked  with  Harry  the  other  day 
some  four  miles  on  the  Holden  road,  to 


62  Letters. 

attend  the  funeral  of  Adams  Foster.  He 
was  a  remarkable  man,  who  really  possessed 
many  virtues,  about  which  so  many  are  al 
ways  talking.  Even  with  all  the  light  of 
this  nineteenth  century^  gospel  or  other,  any 
one  virtue  is  enough,  to  adorn  and  make  con 
spicuous  any  man.  One  very  noticeable  in 
him  was  a  great  content,  which  seemed  too 
deep  to  be  disturbed.  He  came  into  .the 
store  a  few  weeks  ago,  and  said  with  a 
pleasant  smile  as  he  took  a  chair,  "  I  thought 
I  should  like  to  see  you  again.  I  don't  ex 
pect  to  make  many  more  calls  on  my  friends. 
I  shall  leave  this  world  very  soon.  I  don't 
know  that  I  am  going  anywhere  else.  I 
have  no  fault  to  find  if  this  is  to  be  the  last 
of  me.  Life  has  been  a  great  satisfaction." 
This  and  more  of  the  like  said  by  him,  and 
his  life  behind  it,  was  impressive  to  me,  and 
Avill  make  his  call  a  very  memorable  one. 


1873. 

In  the  dearth  of  business  that  has  just 
set  in  I  see  no    reason    whv   I  should  not 


Letters.  63 

begin  a  sort  of  diary  letter  to  you,  putting 
into  it  from  day  to  day  such  little  things  as 
I  pick  up  in  the  street  or  in  my  mind  or 
reading  and  would  think  of  sufficient  interest 
to  record.  Such  a  diary  may  seem  to  show 
the  poverty  of  the  life  I  am  leading,  but  you 
will  please  notice  I  propose  to  speak  only  of 
the  little  things,  only  the  chips,  so  to  speak, 
which  float  on  the  great  current  of  my  life 
and  give  little  hint  of  the  depth  and  richness 
within.  But  seriously  I  would  fain  hope 
that  my  life  may  not  be  so  poor  and  barren 
as  it  often  seems  to  me  ;  the  ground  of  this 
hope  is  in  the  fact  that  God  may  bring 
about  something  like  a  success  when  to  me 
failure  sometimes  seems  inevitable. 


1874. 

This  is  a  day  when  I  feel  like  sub 
scribing  to  this  sentence  of  Emerson's : 
"  Give  me  health  and  a  day  and  I  Avill  make 
the  pomp  of  emperors  ridiculous."  But  I 
cannot  tell  you  much  about  this  brimming 


64  Letters. 

hour  of  the  year,  for  I  have  been  too  busy 
to  go  out,  to  see  it  much ;  to  write  about 
this  spring,  I  should  have  to  pump  up  from 
an  old  spring,  possibly  the  one  we  drank 
from  years  ago  Avhere  we  saw  the  cowslips. 
We  have  laid  up  such  a  stock  of  springs, 
that  we  can  tap  and  draw  from  at  pleasure, 
that  there  seems  less  reason  for  our  giving 
heed  to  those  that  are  passing ;  I  wouldn't 
have  you  think  I  believe  what  I  have  just 
said  ;  possibly,  however,  this  is  as  it  should 
be,  the  dew  of  youth  is  getting  off,  there  is 
less  bread  to  the  wine,  the  sparkle  is  less 
dazzling,  if  not  a  little  dimmed.  Perhaps 
we  have  got  seasoned,  these  fifty  or  sixty 
summers,  winters  and  springs,  are  they  not 
all  safely  packed  away  in  us  !  Compared 
with  that  spring  eternal  in  our  minds,  what 
are  these  muddy  enervating  springs  of  these 
later  years  !  What  is  this  Boylston  out  here 
seven  miles  north,  compared  with  the  old 
Bovlston  of  your  boyhood  !  You  see  I  am 
trying  to  say  something  comforting  to  us 
old  fellows. 


Letters.  (-55 

1874. 

Why  are  we  so  silent,  when  so  much 
is  a  doing?  The  spring  lias  sprung,  trees 
blossoming  and  unfolding  their  leaves,  birds 
singing,  and  the  roll  of  the  toad  is  heard  in 
the  land,  or  rather  the  water  ;  this  morning  I 
heard  the  chip-bird,  the  kind  I  call  the 
cricket-bird,  its  note  is  so  much  like  that  of 
the  cricket,  in  which  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
summer.  This  morning  I  saw  a  robin  visit 
an  old  nest  on  one  of  our  pear  trees,  whether 
with  the  idea  of  repairing  it,  or  thinking  he 
could  make  use  of  some  of  the  old  timber  in 
building  a  new  one,  I  do  not  know  ;  but  as 
the  nest  is  in  a  good  state  of  preservation  I 
•should  think  any  robin,  with  half  an  eye  to 
economy,  would  consider  a  new  lining  only 
necessary. 

I  am  spending  these  great  days  in  a 
new  store  in  an  atmosphere  of  paint  and 
varnish,  with  my  head  filled  with  the  petty 
cares  of  business — a  good  part  of  one  of 
these  spring  days  has  been  spent  in  getting 


H6  Letters. 

up  a  pattern  of  a  morning  coat  for to 

attitudinize  while  playing  croquet ;  the  end 
to  be  sure  to  be  arrived  at  is  great,  so  too  are 
the  means  ;  the  conception  to  begin  with, 
then  the  labor  and  pains  of  birth, — but  per 
haps  the  great  thing  is  the  coat,  if  so  be  the 
coat  is  a  greatcoat.  This  machine  of  a 
universe  is  a  pretty  large  and  complicated 
one,  in  which  there  are  lots  of  private 
springs  and  back  actions,  side  ditto,  some  of 
which  operate  in  strange  ways. 


1874. 

I  walked  this  morning  to  Newton's  hill, 
the  north  side  of  which  is  covered  with 
butter-cups  and  daisies.  How  beautiful  they 
are  sprinkled  in  with  clover  and  other  things 
which  grow  with  them,  the  bobolink  spilling 
his  liquid  songs  over  them — he  is  however 
beginning  to  lose  the  brightness  of  his  plu 
mage  and  there  is  a  little  falling  off  in  the 
exuberance  of  his  first  arrival — later  his 


Letters.  (V7 

plumage  becomes  a  dirty  yellowish  white 
and  his  voice  changes  to  a  squawk  and 
finally  ceases  and  he  sulks  dirty  and  ragged, 
until  the  time  comes  for  him  to  leave. 
What  a  fall  was  there  and  from  what  a 
spring  ! 


April  6U,,  1874. 
To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

T  walked  down  to  "Old  Flagg's,"  in  one 
of  the  cold,  raw  afternoons,  we  had  a  plenty 
of,  last  week.  It  had  been  a  long  time 
since  I  had  walked  over  that  ground,  and 
my  mind  naturally  turned  on  days  gone  by, 
and  selected  a  particular  morning,  which 
made  a  pretty  strong  contrast  to  said  after 
noon.  A  morning  when  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  youth  in  me,  in  which  1  recollect 
holding  up  a  water-lily  against  the  just  risen 
sun,  with  the  glittering  drops  raining  from 
it.  That  was  a  great  morning,  which  made 
this  afternoon  and  Old  Flagg  and  Old 


H8  Letters. 

Brown  look  a  little  dull  and  slow — and 
seeing  Old  Flagg  didn't  help  the  matter 
much.  Has  he  duly  "  considered  the  lilies," 
and  was  he  too  much  for  them?  Perhaps 
they  haven't  been  wasted  on  him, — we  don't 
know  what  he  would  have  been  without 
them.  He  might  suggest,  if  he  should  see 
this  letter,  that  I  should  aim  my  sarcasm  at 
one  nearer  home. 


1875. 

We  have  found  a  new  proof  of  the 
Pessimistic  philosophy,  in  the  fact  that  when 
an  article  is  plenty,  that  is  the  time  when  it 
will  bring  next  to  nothing  in  the  market — 
you  can  only  sell  things  when  you  haven't 
got  them  to  sell.  There  are  the  hens,  they 
furnish  a  strong  proof  of  this  statement ; 
whenever  there  is  a  scarcity  of  eggs,  they 
are  sure  to  find  it  out,  and  stop  laying.  If 
Nature  were  anything  but  a  Pessimist  she 
would  see  to  it  that  eggs  were  plenty,  when 
hens  refused  to  lay.  I  have  left  Stanley. 


Letters.  69 

Didn't  get  quite  through  with  him  to  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  but  followed  him  through 
all  the  fightings  with  the  cannibals.  There 
is  no  getting  on  the  right  .side  of  those 
fellows,  except  you  get  on  the  inside  of 
them. 

How  beyond  our  control  this  really 
having  a  good  time  is  !  We  make  prepara 
tions  of  all  kinds,  with  books,  sweetmeats, 
preachings  and  prayings,  but  how  often  we 
go  home  tired  and  famishing !  after  all  the 
good  spirits  meet  us,  perhaps  in  a  reverie, 
or  while  exchanging  a  feAV  words  with  a 
neighbor  over  a  fence,  and  the  place  and  the 
moments  are  made  memorable  and  constrain 
us  to  better  living. 


I  have  been  waited  on  by  a  Life  Insur 
ance  Agent,  who  has  labored  to  make  it 
clear  to  me  that  I  must  invest  in  a  little 
game,  in  which  I  must  die  to  win.  I  felt 


70  Letters. 

too  lively  on  his  first  visit  and  did  not  see 
the  Policy  of  it.  But  these  fellows  never 
let  go,  and  I  felt  more  and  more  obituary 
with  each  recurrence  of  agent — queer  name  ! 
I  should  say  a  man  was  no  gent,  who  ob 
trudes  one's  grave-stone  continually.  At 
length  one  day  I  succumbed,  and  now  my 
family  have  no  longer  interest  in  keeping 
me  alive. 

And  so  you  have  had  a  cold,  but  I 
doubt  if  it  has  been  equal  to  my  cold.  Mine 
was  so  large  as  to  be  interesting  to  me,  at 
least.  It  lasted  three  almost  immortal  days 
—1  went  into  the  fields  with  mine,  on 
Saturday  afternoon,  and  wept  all  over  them 
and  said  within  myself,  Oh  that  my  head 
were  not  waters,  nor  mine  eyes  a  fountain 
of  tears  !  The  tears  seemed  out  of  all  pro 
portion  to  the  sins  I  felt  sorry  for,  it  seemed 
a  waste  of  waters,  a  much  greater  sinner  I 
fancied  mi^ht  be  run  with  them. 


Letters.  7} 

May  20th,  1875. 


To  M.  G. 


I  suppose  thousands  of  tragedies  such 
as  we  saw  from  our  breakfast  table  are 
transpiring  every  moment  in  this  "fallen" 
planet.  We  saw  a  eat  spring  from  the  walk 
into  the  grass  and  immediately  a  beautiful 
golden  oriole  fly  up,  but  only  about  a  foot, 
before  the  cat  picked  it  up,  right  out  of  the 
air,  and  with  her  golden  booty  projecting  in 
all  directions  from  her  mouth,  marched 
proudly  off,  to  breakfast  on  it.  Sarah  and 
Alice  were  for  starting  right  off,  to  put  a 
stop  to  such  doings,  unmindful  of  the  Script 
ure  "  Your  Heavenly  Father  feedeth  them," 
and  I  presume  they  would  have  been  just  as 
ready  to  go  if  they  had  been  breakfasting 
on  bird-pie. 

Have  you  seen  Lowell's  comparison 
of  life  to  the  clattering  of  a  flock  of  sheep 
across  a  bridge  and  the  silence  which  fol 
lows  ?  "A  confused  clatter  between  two 
silences  ending  in  dust." 


72  Letters. 

December  10th,  1875. 
To  J.  D. 

I  have  just  been  listening  to  the  ticking 
of  our  old  clock,  and  thinking  of  my  creep 
ing  under  its  ticking  in  a  little  one-story 
house  in  Seekonk.  I  must  have  left  that 
house  when  I  was  very  young,  for  I  can 
remember  but  two  things  in  my  experience 
there.  One  of  them  is  not  pleasant  to  re 
member.  The  outlook  and  inlook  of  the 
family  at  that  time,  was  anything  but  cheer 
ing.  My  father  had  been  sick  with  con 
sumption  (the  end  of  which  was  death),  so 
long  that  the  little  property  he  had,  dwindled 
to  a  frightfully  small  sum.  Those  were  dark 
days  for  my  mother  and  it  was  at  the  end 
of  a  hard  day's  work,  that  I  refused,  when 
asked  to  do  for  her  some  little  service.  The 
expression  of  her  tired  face,  as  she  looked 
into  mine,  photographed  itself  upon  my 
memory,  in  a  way  that  is  lasting.  If  T 
could  onl}7  do  that  service  now !  But  the 
time  to  do  it  was  about  sixtv  years  ago. 


Letters.  73 

Some  of  my  experiences  in  that  sleepy  old 
Seekonk,  over  which  the  velvet  footed  hours 
crept  so  silently,  might,  I  fancy  be  interest 
ing  to  you,  if  I  were  a  poet,  and  could  do 
it  properly.  If  I  were  a  poet,  merely  to 
tell  you  of  the  shingle-shaving  machine  in 
the  shade  of  an  apple-tree,  by  the  side  of 
the  road,  which  I  passed  on  my  way  to  and 
from  school,  might  not  convey  much  to  you, 
but  there  is  much  in  it  to  me.  The  clean 
look  of  the  shingles,  and  oh !  the  smell  of 
the  cedar  and  the  long  summer  days  that 
brooded  over  it  all. 

I  took  a  walk  over  Millstone  hill  this 
afternoon,  and  came  home  by  the  Hermit 
age.  It  is  so  much  changed,  you  would 
hardly  know  the  place.  Those  little  maples, 
from  which  we  once  shook  a  crop  of  young 
owls,  are  all  gone,  and  the  trees  are  cut 
down  about  the  Pond ;  so  that  it  is'nt  a 
Hermitage  any  more. 

That  was  a  long  time  ago,  and  what  a 
different  world  that,  from  this,  in  which  I 
am  living  now.  AVe  exchange  worlds  many 


74  Letters. 

times  before  we  have  a  funeral  which  ap 
pears  in  the  street.  My  acquaintance  with 
you,  marks  a  boundary  line  between  two  of 
my  worlds ;  you  taught  me  to  walk  and  in 
troduced  me  to  nature,  and  I  saw  her 
through  your  eyes  awhile.  Then  Emerson 
took  possession  of  me,  then  Thoreau,  and 
I  have  lived  along  the  greater  part  of  my 
life  a  sort  of  parasite  of  these  men. 


1876. 

I  got  my  first  glimpse  of  spring  just 
now  on  my  way  home.  I  saw  it  in  the 
color  of  the  sunlight,  in  the  yellowish  or 
topaz  tinge  it  has,  and  heard  it  in  the  sough 
ing  of  the  breeze  in  the  Misses  Burnside's 
yard.  It  was  a  faint  intimation,  but  the 
first  intimations  though  faint  are  very  in 
spiring  to  me,  waking  me  up,  as  they  do,  to 
the  fact  that  the  old  and  forever  interesting 
miracle  of  spring  is  to  be  performed  again. 
They  are  the  prelude  to  all  that  is  to  fol- 


Letters.  75 

low — to  the  faint  exultant  note  of  the  blue 
bird,  the  roll  of  the  toad  and  the  sweet  strain 
of  the  meadow  lark,  the  jingling  of  the  song- 
sparrow,  etc.  All  the  millions  of  birds  and 
insects  that  go  to  make  up  even  one  of  our 
poorest  springs. 


1876. 

I  wish  you  knew  my  friend  R — ,  a  rare 
man,  all  desirable  kinds  of  a  man  ;  can  meet 
the  highest  on  very  high  grounds  ;  carries 
guns  of  all  sorts,  from  a  columbiad  to  a  pop 
gun  ;  tells  a  story  almost  better  than  you 
do,  and  has  an  inexhaustible  well  of  fun  in 
him,  springing  up  into  everlasting  life ;  I 
have  almost  wished  that  my  advent  in  life 
might  have  been  more  contemporary  with 
him,  or  if  I  had  been  late  enough  to  go  to 
school  to  him  instead  of  the  teacher  I  had  in 
Providence,  who  knows  what  a  different 
Theo.  Brown  I  might  have  been.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  anv  better  course  to 


76  Letters. 

take  to  prevent  a  boy  from  getting  an  edu 
cation  than  sending  him  to  that  school,  or 
to  hold  him  back  from  development,  than 
sending  him  to  Asa  Allen's  to  nail  boxes  to 
gether  and  whistle  ;  but  I  can  say  the  Attle- 
boro  life  was  well  for  the  puny  boy ;  Mrs. 
Allen's  boiled  toast  moistened  with  milk  of 
an  azure  tint  never  tempted  us  to  eat  more 
than  we  needed. 


1876. 

The  Almanac,  the  Bible,  and  the  Uni- 
versalist  Trumpet,  were  about  all  the  read 
ing  we  had  in  those  days  in  Attleboro.  The 
Bible  interested  Mr.  Allen,  because  he 
thought  he  found  in  it  the  doctrine  of  uni 
versal  salvation.  A  Yankee  farmer  away 
off  in  North  America,  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  bothering  his  brain  about  those  old 
schemes  of  salvation  or  damnation  !  feeling 
that  they  are  binding  on  him  !  There  \vere 
the  heavens  filled  with  stars  right  over  his 


Letter*.  77 

farm,  this  great  rich  nature  filled  with  mys 
teries  coming  right  up  to  his  door-sill,  in 
viting  him  to  study  her,  and  offering  such 
rich   rewards.       But  these  things   were   of 
small   account  to  him  compared   with  the 
question  of  salvation   or  damnation.      But 
Mr.  Allen's  salvation,  what  salvation  he  had, 
I   suspect   came  in  quite  another  way.      It 
came  through   his  industry,  filling  up  bog- 
holes  and  making  the  place  say  corn  and 
potatoes  instead  of  frogs.    I  am  not  ignorant 
of  the  fact  that  the  above  hits  me  as  hard  as 
it  does  Asa  Allen.    I  spent  years  over  those 
doctrines,  when  I  might  have  been  learning 
something   much   more  useful.     And    what 
bo<>:-hole  can    I   point  to,  that  I  have  filled. 
But  I  like  to  hear  frogs,   and  frogs  want 
some  bog-holes  to  live  in. 


1876. 


Cole's  voyage  of  life  has  been  interest 
ing  to  me  ;  the  two  little  children  at  the 
extreme  prow  are  absorbed  in  things  only, 


78  Letters. 

but  the  girl  a  little  farther  back  has  evi 
dently  awakened  to  consciousness,  and  is  in 
a  reverie  of  thought  (I  don't  know  as  one  can 
be  in  a  reverie  of  anything  but  thought)  ; 
— Fate,  the  boatman,  looks  as  though  he 

O 

could  be  depended  upon  to  get  them  over, 
in  season,  rain  or  shine ;  it  is  useless  to 
say  in  this  connection,  Providence  permit 
ting,  we  are  sure  of  a  passage  over  in  that 
boat,  if  we  haven't  a  cent,  if  not  over, 
under.  "  If  my  bark  sinks,  'tis  to  another 
sea,"  sounds  well  and  may  be  true.  But 
speculations  on  the  destiny  of  that  boat  lead 
away  from  the  picture.  The  old  man  has 
evidently  the  years  bad,  looks  in  fact  curled 
up  with  them  and  is  looking  neither  back 
ward  or  forward,  but  down,  so  it  matters 
not  which  way  he  faces. 


1876. 

We  sailed  up  the  Concord  River  with 
just  enough  wind  to  prevail  over  the  current, 
which  was  strong  of  course  against  us. — 


Letters.  79 

No,  our  first  voyage  was  up  the  Assabet. 
I  would  like  to  give  you  just  what  Thoreau 
said,  but  that  is  difficult ;  his  talk  fits  into 
the  time  and  place,  into  these  rivers,  and  it 
would  lose  by  being  brought  away,  as  wild 
flowers  do  by  being  brought  from  their 
homes.  We  pulled  into  our  boat  a  great 
tortoise  weighing  some  thirty  pounds.  None 
of  your  wavering  between  spirit  and  matter 
for  him,  no  reachings  out  after  the  infinite, 
but  a  good  tough  solid  life  of  it.  I  guess 
the  old  fable,  in  which  the  world  rests  on 
him  is  founded  on  fact.  He  seems  at  the 
bottom  of  the  heap,  but  who  has  ever  heard 
him  complain  of  the  back-ache  ! 


Ait  <f  it  xt  2  7  tli,  1876. 

To  E.  B.  L. 

I  saw  a  Night  Blooming  Cereus  this 
evening-  It  resembles  a  water-lily,  but 
is  larger.  The  great  quantity  of  fragrance 
it  gives  out  enhances  the  impression  it 


80  Letters. 

makes.  Then  the  long  preparation  there 
has  been  for  this  magnificent  blooming 
and  its  time  of  doing  it  in  the  night, — that 
helps.  The  thing  seems  somehow  self-con 
scious,  realizes  that  it  is  a  great  night  with  it. 
The  visitors  stand  hushed  in  its  presence 
as  they  do  in  the  presence  of  some  great 
work  of  art,  a  great  picture,  or  piece  of 
sculpture.  Think  of  those  splendid  flowers 
opening  in  the  night  in  the  wilds  of  Mexico, 
where  there  are  no  eyes  to  look  at  them, 
except  those  of  lizards  and  snakes.  On 
speaking  of  the  number  of  pistils,  some  one 
remarked  they  must  need  them,  living  as 
they  do  among  such  savage  neighbors.  But 
what  do  the  young  shoots  do,  before  they 
get  old  enough  to  carry  their  pistils  ?  They 
probably  pull  up  stakes,  —  no,  roots  and 
leaves,  when  they  see  danger  ;  but  how  can 
that  be  when  their  leaves  depend  on  their 
roots  ?  But  it  occurs  to  me  that  they  depend 
upon  the  branches.  The  thing  has  got  so 
tangled,  I  shall  have  to  give  it  up, — besides 
it  is  making  light  of  a  Cereus  subject. 


Letters. 

April  4th,  1876. 


To  J.  D. 


A  raging  snow-storm  ;  what  wild  work 
is  going  on  at  Sear  Bridge  to-night !  The 
progeny  of  that  hawk  we  have  seen  there, — 
how  do  they  manage,  to-night?  and  the 
blue-birds  and  robins,  whose  instincts  have 
played  them  false,  methinks  the  night  may 
seem  a  trifle  long  to  them,  and  how  about 
their  breakfasts  to-morrow  morninjr?  The 

o 

earliest  of  them  can  hardly  calculate  on 
finding  a  worm.  The  crows  will  have  a 
restless  night  of  it.  Think  of  roosting  on 
the  swaying  branch  of  a  tree  on  such  a  night 
as  this.  The  snow  falls  perchance  on  the 
back  of  a  hawk,  sitting  on  one  of  said 
branches.  What  are  his  thoughts  I  wonder? 
Does  time  ever  hang  heavy  on  his  wings? 
These  creatures  seem  to  have  less  time-kill 
ing  inventions  than  we  do.  No  church  or 
school,  no  regular  meal  times,  theirs  being 
of  the  chance  sort  and  I  imagine  stretched 
too  far  apart  for  comfort,  and  the  waiting 


82  Letters. 

for  a  squirrel  or  mole,  of  which  one  feels 
hardly  sure  of  ever  coming,  or  of  catching, 
when  he  does  come,  must  if  too  long  pro 
tracted,  be  anything  but  pleasant.  The  wind 
roars  and  squeals  and  sighs  and  sobs  and 
swishes  against  the  window-panes,  just  as 
}rou  would  like  to  hear  it.  How  it  tears 
over  the  Paxton  hills  !  It  is  easy  to  imag 
ine  these  noises  the  dying  groans  of  men 
and  women  struggling  in  Paxton  and  Oak- 
ham  snow-drifts.  If  you  were  here  we 
would  have  a  night  of  it,  and  if  'twere  any 
one  but  you  I  should  entertain  him  by  get 
ting  out  one  of  your  old  letters, — that  one 
with  the  right  old  English  poetry, — begin 
ning 

"  O'er  mountains  and  moorlands 

Through  sleet  and  through  snow, 
The  teamster  fast  hurries  his  way." 


1877. 

Well,  here  we  are,  at  the  fag  end  of 
another  year.     The  years  are  getting  short, 


Letters.  $3 

in  these  latter  days,  but  they  are  large. 
Just  think,  how  much  is  packed  in  one  of 
them ;  merely  the  human  experience  of  our 
little  planet  in  a  year,  how  considerable ! 
then  the  experience  of  all  the  inferior  ani 
mals,  no  tiniest  insect  but  has  contributed 
its  mite;  and  the  vegetable  kingdom  that 
must  l>e  reckoned  in.  The  frail  morning- 
glory,  that  I  wore  in  my  button-hole,  which 
wilted  on  my  way  to  the  store,  is  really  a 
part  of  the  sum  of  things.  The  last  sands 
of  the  old  year  will  soon  drop  and  Oh  how 
silently  !  no  emphasis  will  be  given  to  the 
last  one  ;  this  stream  of  time  how  quietly 
and  unceasingly  it  flows  ! 


December  26th,  1877. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

I  thank  you  for  the  present  and  the  re 
membrance,  and  I  am  sorry  you  did  not  get 
one  from  me.  I  like  to  see  presents  made 
to  the  children,  and  perhaps  it  is  as  well  to 


84  Letters. 

set  apart  a  day  for  doing  it,  though  I  am 
inclined  to  think  they  would  enjoy  them 
better,  scattered  along  through  the  year. 
But  a  good  deal  of  the  giving  going  on  be 
tween  the  older  ones,  is  poor  enough.  It  is 
so  large  a  matter  of  debt  and  credit,  that 
there  is  really  very  little  giving  about  it.  I 
saw  a  forest  of  Christmas  trees,  for  one 
family,  this  year,  and  remembering  the 
paucity  of  my  presents,  in  my  childhood,  I 
almost  pitied  these  children,  for  I  can  not 
imagine  they  can  get  anything  like  the 
nutriment  out  of  such  a  quantity  as  can  be 
got  out  of  a  few.  I  remember  my  brother 
walked  from  Providence  to  Seekonk,  one 
Saturday  night,  bringing  with  him  a  little 
red  and  green  chaise  or  wagon,  done  up  in 
a  bandanna  pocket  handkerchief,  and  undid 
the  bundle  by  lamp-light.  I  was  told  it 
was  mine.  Great  Heavens,,  what  an  experi 
ence,  and  what  splendor  !  It  was  almost  too 
dazzling  to  look  at,  and  it  was  all  mine  !  ! 
I  hope  the  children  who  are  now-a-days  sur 
feited  with  things  do  manage  to  digest  a  few 


Letters.  35 

of  them.  Miss  Lincoln  is  going  to  have  a 
tree  for  poor  children.  That  seems  a  good 
thing  to  do.  Some  of  the  children  in  Pine 
Meadow  or  elsewhere,  who  have  only  "an 
oyster  shell  and  a  dead  kitten  "  by  wav  of 
toys  would  enjoy  the  discarded  playthings 

*•        *  £*) 

of  these  better-provided  children  ;  and  if 
any  of  the  latter  class  could  be  made  to 
understand  the  thing,  they  would  like  to 
load  down  such  a  tree,  and  would  find  that 
giving  left  a  better  taste  in  the  mouth  than 
receiving. 


1878. 

Bertha  grows  more  interesting  every 
day,  and  she  was  as  interesting  as  she  could 
be,  a  long  time  ago.  It  is  astonishing  how 
charming  these  babies  are  !  Nature  knows 
how  to  fix  that  thing,  so  as  to  ensure  their 
proper  care.  If  our  care  for  them  was 
founded  on  duty,  they  might  have  a  hard 
time  of  it ;  but  they  have  their  little  hands 
full  of  our  heartstrings  and  they  drive  us 


86  Letters. 

with  all  ease.  What  a  means  of  grace  they 
are  !  what  a  rough  set  of  humans  or  rather 
inhumans  we  should  be  without  them  ! 


1878. 

I  had  a  good  walk  Avith  Blake  yester 
day,  off  on  the  Tatnuck  road,  home  by 
Marshall  Flagg's.  The  day  was  fine  and  so 
were  the  cigars  we  smoked  on  the  sunny 
side  of  a  stone-wall ;  the  bars  having  been 
let  down,  it  was  rather  cool  for  Harry's 
back,  but  we  changed  for  another,  where 
he  had  a  little  pine  tree  at  his  back,  and  the 
great  warm  sun  at  his  front,  and  we  had  a 
good  time  there  and  were  more  than  recon 
ciled  to  the  universe— hoped  indeed  that 
the  thing  would  be  kept  up,  and  that  we 
should  not  be  dropped  out.  Of  the  first  we 
did  not  feel  much  doubt,  but  of  the  latter 
we  hardly  see  how  the  thing  can  be  done, 
without  bringing  in  the  supernatural ;  the 
proofs  of  our  own  continuance  do  not  seem 


Letters.  $7 

to  grow  stronger  as  we  grow  older ;  it  is  all 
left  very  much  in  the  dark,  as  you  may  have 
observed,  enough  to  make  it  very  interest 
ing—a  pretty  deep  sense  of  the  mystery  of 
our  being  here,  and  of  there  being  any  here 
to  be  in,  came  over  us,  and  Harry  said  :  "It 
is  first-rate,  and  I  wouldn't  have  any  less 
mystery,  if  I  had  had  the  making  of  things 
myself." 


April,  1878. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

This  is  a  drizzly,  disagreeable  morning, 
and  the  people  in  the  streets  have  a  cheap 
look,  and  remind  one  (and  that's  me)  of  a 
passage  in  Shakespeare, 

"How  stale,  flat  and  unprofitable  are  all  the  uses  of 
this  world." 

But  the  beauty  of  the  way  of  putting 
the  above  sentence,  is  a  sufficient  answer  to 
it.  If  not  that,  a  thousand  other  sentences 
of  his  can  be  quoted,  that  make  it  seem 


88  Letters. 

quite  worth  while  to  run  a  planet  of  this 
size.  I  suppose  when  the  world  looks  poor 
to  us,  it  is  because  we  are  poor.  It  takes 
the  color  of  our  spectacles.  I  heard  a  man 
apologizing  the  other  day  for  not  being 
ready  to  pay  all  his  rent,  saying  he  had  a 
large  family  of  children  to  support,  and  that" 
he  had  to  go  five  miles  a  day,  to  and  from 
his  work  (wood  chopping),  earning  three 
dollars  a  week.  Now  when  we  hear  such 
things  we  think  this  is  a  hard  world,  but 
this  man  seemed  in  good  spirits  and  I  dare 
say  he  speaks  well  of  the  world  and  enjoys 
it  much  better  than  a  large  class  of  the  rich, 
who  hardly  know  how  to  pass  away  their 
time.  Satisfaction  with  life  is  often  found 
where  we  are  least  likely  to  look  for  it. 


March  9th,  1878. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

The  other  evening  I  went  to  see  some 
pictures  on  exhibition,  and  was  much  pleased 


Letters.  §9 

with  one  called  "  Morning  among  the  moun 
tains."  The  kind  of  morning  chosen  by  the 
artist  is  a  rare  one,  and  the  moments  in  such 
a  morning  very  transient.  The  sun  has  just 
risen  and  his  golden  beams  gild  everything 
in  the  foreground — especially  a  flock  of 
sheep  and  a  shepherdess,  seated  high  on  the 
rocks.  It  is  one  of  the  mornings  such  as 
Shakespeare  had  in  mind  wJien  he  wrote  : — 

"Many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen, 
Flatter  the  mountain  top  with  sovereign  eye, 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green ; 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchemy." 

The  picture  seems  to  have  been  painted 
with  great  accuracy  and  is  full  of  poetry, 
but  the  shepherdess  is  as  little  aware  of  the 
poetry  as  are  the  sheep.  She  is  probably 
an  average  shepherdess,  has  a  healthy  ruddy 
face,  and  a  good  appetite,  and  has  undoubt 
edly  seen  more  pale  streams  gilded  with 
heavenly  alchemy  than  ever  Shakespeare 
did,  but  if  she  thought  it  worth  while  to 
speak  about  them,  I  suspect  she  may  have 
expressed  herself  differently.  I  haven't 


90  Letters. 

said  much  to  the  purpose,  about  this  pict 
ure,  and  I  suppose  that  the  artist  himself 
felt  that  he  had  only  hinted  at  that  nameless 
something,  that  beauty  only  suggests. 


September  27th,  1878. 
To  E.  B.  L. 

I  should  like  to  tell  you  something 
about  Bertha.  If  I  could  report  her  pretty 
ways,  and  the  things  she  says,  they  wouldn't 
be  much  to  you,  as  you  are  not  acquainted 
with  her.  I  wish  I  could  picture  her  as  I 
saw  her  the  other  day,  with  a  "popo" 
(flower)  held  tightly  in  her  little  hand,  and 
her  jaunty  hat  on  the  side  of  her  head,  and 
her  hair  in  just  the  right  disorder  on  her 
forehead.  It  would  be  a  weak  way  of  put 
ting  it,  to  say  she  was  "as  pretty  as  a  pict 
ure."  When  I  find  a  picture  as  pretty  as 
she  was,  I  shall  buy  it,  if  I  have  to  mort 
gage  my  house  for  it.  When  we  think  how 
few  grandparents  care  anything  about  their 


Letters.  91 

grandchildren,  don't  you  think  we  are  fortu 
nate  in  having  those  that  we  can  love  and 
take  interest  in? 

We  have  the  news  this  morning  of  the 
death  of  Benjamin  F.  Thomas.  Nearly  all 
the  men  I  knew  in  my  youth  seem  to  be 
dying,  these  days.  Except  that  death  is  so 
contrary  to  all  our  past  experience  that  we 
have  any  recollection  of,  it  would  seem  as 
though  we  might  die  ourselves  some  day. 
I  find  that  I  am  getting  more  interested  in 
the  past,  and  the  probability  is  that  bye- 
and-bye  I  shall  go  over  bodily  to  the  past 
and  cut  all  connection  with  the  present. 
But  this  thing  I  mean  to  keep  a  secret,  so 
do  not  say  anything  about  it. 


October  5th,  1878. 
To  J.  D. 

Yes,  my  old  friend,  I  have  lately 
passed  another  of  my  birthdays.  Sixty- 
seven  years  ago,  the  fifteenth  of  last  month, 


92  Letters. 

doubtless  a  little  ripple  of  excitement  may 
have  been  stirred  in  the  sleepy  old  neighbor 
hood  of  Rehoboth  (now  Seekonk)  by  the 
announcement  that  Mrs.  Samuel  Brown  had 
another  son.  Very  likely  Uncle  Peter,  who 
lived  opposite  our  house,  may  have  shouted 
the  news,  from  the  field  where  he  was  at 
work,  to  some  of  his  neighbor  farmers  as 
they  passed  by.  I  have  got  so  far  away 
from  that  fellow  there,  that  it  does  not  seem 
like  egotism  to  talk  about  him ;  but  though 
I  Avas  there  and  right  in  the  thick  on't,  I 
can't  tell  much  about  it  now.  The  Uncle 
Peter  referred  to  is  still  living  and  well 
enough  to  do  considerable  work.  He  must 
be  much  older  than  you.  But  we  are  get 
ting  along  where  we  shall  have  to  hunt  up 
some  old  men,  in  order  to  pass  for  young 
ones  ourselves. 

Life  is  getting  pretty  full  of  reminis 
cences.  Coming  from  Alice's  last  night, 
down  Lincoln  street,  there  was  the  avenue 
of  pines,  on  what  was  Wm.  Lincoln's  land, 
leading  to  the  Pond,  which  you  must  re- 


Letters.  93 

member,  reminding  me  of  an  evening  with 
you,  George  L.  Brown  and  wife,  Sarah 
Flagg  and  her  sister  Elizabeth,  Sain'l  Lamb, 
with  his  guitar,  and  Fisher  Flagg,  with  his 
flute — we  look  pretty  handsome  there  in  the 
distance.  The  Pond  is  now  gone,  moon 
light,  etc.,  etc.  The  moonlight  in  those 
days  had  a  depth  to  it  that  is  wanting  now. 
We  believed  in  the  supernatural  then — some 
of  us — and  were  ready,  and  almost  expect 
ing  to  see  wonders  such  as  "Proteus  rising 

O  O 

from  the  sea,"  or  hear  old  "Triton  blow  his 
wreathed  horn  ;" — but  science,  evolution, 
and  what  not,  have  been  sapping  the  poetry 
of  nature,  as  some  of  us  saw  it.  Since  the 
discovery  that  the  moon  is  a  played-out  old 
planet,  and  only  useful  as  a  reflector,  its 
light  seems  thin  and  cheap.  I  can  imagine 
how  those  old  Pagans  felt,  when  the  infidels 
of  their  day  attacked  and  finally  swept  the 
heavens  clean  of  their  old  gods.  How  bar 
ren  and  poor  they  must  have  looked  to 
them. 


94  Letters. 

October  26th,  1878. 
To  A.  B.  M. 

Time  is  plenty  and  business  scarce, 
and  there  is  no  good  reason  why  I  shouldn't 
write  to  you.  I  have  ample  time  to  go  into 
— 's  line  of  business,  writing  my  life.  It 
needs  righting,  but  it  hardly  seems  fair  to 
write  it  all  to  you.  Possibly  you  would 
prefer  a  little  time  in  which  to  live  your 
own,  to  giving  it  all  to  reading  mine.  But 
I  don't  mean  to  do  the  thing  thoroughly, 
and  you  need  not  feel  obliged  to  answer  one 
of  my  letters.  This  matter  of  writing  our 
thoughts  should  be  very  free.  Let  our 
quills  be  as 


"  free  as  the  eagle's  wing  " 
Whether  of  trivial  news  we  write, 
Or  mount  on  mighty  pens  and  sing. 


How's   that  for  high  ?      Pretty  bad   I 
should  sav,  for  metre. 


Letters.  95 

1878. 


To  A.  B.  M. 


My  eye  just  rests  on  a  sentence  in  your 
letter  (which  lies  by  me),  in  which  you  say 
it  is  a  pity  "the  morning-glory  fades  so 
soon."  Now  I  suspect  that  transientness 
you  lament,  which  we  always  associate  with 
flowers,  is  a  part  of  their  beauty.  If  they 
were  more  permanent  they  would  be  less 
beautiful.  A  tinge  of  sadness  goes  often 
with  the  contemplation  of  beaut}',  I  think. 
It  goes,  too,  with  the  moonlight  with  me. 
I  remember  (were  you  of  the  party?) 
coming  home  from  Long  Pond  on  a  certain 
moonlight  evening  years  ago.  The  face  of 
Elizabeth  Guild  I  remember  so  well.  She 
had  a  very  beautiful  complexion,  and  it  has 
somehow  got  mixed  with  the  moonlight  in 
my  memory  pleasantly,  though  there  is  this 
tinge  of  sadness  with  it  of  which  I  speak. 
Where  now  is  that  fair  face  ?  It  does  not 


96  Letters. 

seem  possible  that  she  can  be  living  through 
all  these  hundreds  of  years,  and  yet  we  feel 
that  we  have  hardly  begun  to  be  old  yet ! 
The;  trees  in  that  pasture  where  we  picked 
berries  that  afternoon  have  grown  up  since 
that  day.  I  walked  there  some  months  ajjo 

v  O 

alone,  in  their  shade,  which  seemed  a  deep 
one  to  me,  and  was  very  suggestive. 

I  walked  yesterday  with  Hariy.  It  was 
a  gray  day.  We  sat  on  the  bank  of  Long 
Pond,  and  looked  off  on  to  the  brown  hills 
and  into  the  brown  woods,  keeping  the 
ground  for  the  most  part  in  our  thoughts. 
A  dead  hawk  lay  in  the  water  near  by,  which 
had  probably  been  shot  while  sailing  over 
the  pond.  Perhaps  the  sight  of  that  broken 
winged  hawk  crippled  our  thoughts  ;  at  any 
rate  they  did  not  soar.  But  we  had  a  good 
time.  The  day  had  a  good  sober  cheer  to  it, 
and  was  not  lacking  in  splendors,  probably, 
had  we  been  up  to  seeing  them. 


Letters.  97 

January  3d,  1879. 
To  A.  W. 

I  thought  of  you  in  the  night,  when 
awakened  by  the  furious  wind  playing  all 
manner  of  pranks  with  the  fleece  of  the 
little  lamb-like  snow-storm,  which  came  in 
looking  so  innocent  yesterday  morning,  but 
went  out  a  raging  lion.  It  was  two  degrees 
below  zero,  this  morning,  and  the  wind  still 
1)  lowing — very  different  this  from  the  blow 
ing  of  the  roses,  where  you  are.  You  got 
off  in  the  right  time  to  escape  all  this  snow, 
wind  and  cold.  It  might  seem  almost  Provi 
dential,  your  going,  if  there  were  not  so 
man}'  here  who  did  not  get  off.  You  are  in 
Florida,  a  flowery  land.  Let  us  have  a 
flowery  note — inclose  a  flower  or  two,  or 
a  little  alligator;  I  suppose  Postmasters 
would  demur  at  letting  a  full-grown  one 
come  through. 

I  was  surprised  in  opening  the  Editor's 

Drawer  of  the  last  Harper's,  to  see  the  fol- 

7 


98  Letter*. 

lowing  rhyme  of   mine,  for  I  didn't    send 
it  there  : — 

A  pious  old  fellow  in  Lynn 
Believed  in  original  sin ; 
He  was  full  on 't,  he  said 
From  his  heels  to  his  head. 
And  his  neighbors  believed  him  in  Lynn. 

Curtis  and  I  attend  to  the  furniture  of 
that  magazine,  you  see — he  to  the  Easy 
Chair  and  I  to  the  Drawer  !  ! 

I  have  just  got  your  earthquake  letter. 
It  is  easy  to  see  from  your  account  of  it  that 
it  is  just  as  well  to  throw  the  reins  over  the 
neck  of  an  earthquake  and  let  it  "  gang  its 
ain  gait,"  as  any  way. 


To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  have  lately  read  a  pamphlet  compar 
ing  Transcendentalism  with  Pantheism  and 
Materialism.  If  you  have  not  read  it,  you 
may  like  to  know  how  the  world  was  made, 
and  Nancy,  too.  She  knows  well  enough 


Letters.  ()<) 

how  butter  Is  made  ;  she  can  .stop  her  churn 
ing  and  learn  with  you  how  the  world  is 
made.  According  to  Buddha  and  the  Tran- 
scendentalists  (so  savs  the  writer)  the  thiiif 

"  /  '        O 

was  done  in  this  way.  "The  universe  has 
got  possession  of  what  life  of  such  existence 
as  it  has,  through  the  disintegration  of  the 
aboriginal  nothing  by  means  of  another  sub 
sequent  nothing."  Now  I  dare  say  you  will 
make  the  same  blunder  I  did,  if  you  try  and 
think  it  out  yourselves.  I  said  to  myself, 
"Oh,  I  see  how  it  is  ;  the  two  nothings  rub 
together,  and  the  rubbings  produce  fire,  and 
fire  according  to  some  of  the  old  philoso 
phers  is  the  foundation  of  everything."  But 
this  is  not  the  way  at  all.  Don't  you.  see 
the  fallacy  of  that  theory?  Don't  you  see 
that  if  the  thing  had  been  tried  in  that  Avay 
it  would  have  been  a  failure?  The  fire  you 
see  would  have  burnt  up  the  little  nothing 
there  wasn't,  and  then  there  wouldn't  have 
been  anything,  and  then  where  would  you 
be?  Neither  you  nor  your  butter,  Nancy, 
would  ever  have  "  come."  I  haven't  time  to 


100  Letters. 

tell  you  how  the  thing  was  done  now,  or 
rather  wasn't,  for  it  is  not, — it  only  seems. 
But  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it  when  I  see 
you.  Meantime  you  can  go  right  on  with 
your  farming  and  churning,  just  as  though 
you  were  there,  to  farm  and  churn,  which 
you  are  not.  "The  perception  of  visible 
things  is  a  mistake." 


To  L.  P.  H. 

We  have  been  to  the  Pond  to-day — 
Harry  and  I.  The  Rev.  Mr.  B.  took  his 
skates  and  so  did  his  companion,  and  they 
skated  from  the  causeway  down  the  pond, 
stopping  occasionally  on  the  sunny  sides  of 
islands  to  rest.  I  mean  to  put  a  sprig  of 
black  alder  in  this  letter  for  you,  and  if  }^ou 
will  take  the  trouble  to  put  it  into  wafer,  it 
will  not  be  entirely  cheated  out  of  its  spring, 
and  you  may  have  it  with  it,  in  your  parlor. 
You  must  put  up  with  remembering  the  bird- 
singing  that  has  been  done  in  it,  for  I  hardly 


Letters.  101 

think  they,  the  birds,  will  follow  it  even 
into  your  parlor.  It  grew  on  the  south  edge 
of  Goat  Island — a  delightful  place,  I  assure 
you,  in  this  morning's  sunlight. 

We  skated  down  by  Davis's  Cottage, 

»-  ~ 

into    and    through    Half-moon    Pond,    and 
through  some  of  the  lily  grounds  or  rather 
waters,  but  not  where  you  have  been — into 
Flint's  Pond.    We  visited  a  muskrat's  house, 
knocked — not  at  the  door,  for  we  could  not 
find  one,  but  on  the  sides,  and  shouted,  but 
got  no  answer.     I  suppose  a  pair  of  them 
were  there,  without  doubt.    I  wonder  if  the 
days  are  too  long  for  them,  shut  up  there  in 
one  little  room  with  no  books,  the  monotony 
of  the  day  broken  only,  so  far  as  we  know, 
by  going  to  some  spring,  where  is  an  open 
ing  in  the  ice,  if  so  be  they  can  find  one — 
or  diving  to  the  bottom  for  a  clam,  which 
they  carry  into  their  parlor,    dining-room 
and  bed-room,  and  eat  there  in  the  dark. 
A  sentence  of  a  few  lines  of  the  experience 
of  one  of  these  fellows  I  would  give  soine- 
thino-  to  see,  if  I  could  read  it.     But  Sarah 


102  Letters. 

is  getting  restless  on  the  lounge  and  would 
not  approve  of  my  keeping  her  up  for 
any  such  business  as  this  of  writing  about 
muskrats.  I  hope  you  will  not  be  robbed 
of  any  needful  sleep  reading  these  musk- 
rat  lines,  for  I  know  too  little  of  them  to 
have  anything  to  the  purpose  to  say  about 
them. 


To  L.  P.  H. 

You  express  a  desire  in  a  late  note,  to 
know  something  about  my  walk  with  Harry. 
I  find  a  scrap  of  paper  in  my  pocket,  on 
which  I  began  a  letter  to  you,  but  failed  to 
finish,  thinking  it  was  rather  slow  ;  I  don't 
now  think  it  a  "two-forty"  note,  but  on 
looking  it  over  it  recalls  to  my  mind  some  of 
our  walk,  and  I  have  a  sort  of  respect  for  it, 
even  for  the  last  sentence  or  two,  which 
seemed  so  sort  of  slow  and  heavy,  like  many 
books,  that  I  read  them  aloud  to  Harry  and 


Letters.  103 

we  had  a  hearty  laugh  over  them.     I  will 
copy  the  document  :— 

SHELBURNE,  July  14th. 

We  are  on  our  walk,  but  this  morning 
are  lying  by  (as  it  is  raining  fast),  snugly 
quartered  in  a  private  house  with  very  nice 
people,  very  intelligent  withal.  One  of  the 
ladies  is  a  school-mistress,  spending  her 
vacation  at  home.  The  other  has  a  husband 
and  baby,  but  does  not  seem  to  have  so  good 
a  time  as  a  woman  with  such  possessions 
ought  to  have.  She  is  quite  young,  and  I 
fancy  has  found  married  life  not  precisely 
the  kind  of  bliss  she  anticipated.  She 
evidently  almost  despairs  of  having  her 
dreams  realized.  We  will  hope  she  will  get 
safely  through  these  narrows  of  married  life, 
in  which  some  seem  to  get  snagged  and  come 
out  into  wider  and  sunnier  seas,  with  wide 
and  restful  prospects  (you  may  supply  a 
better  word  for  that  last) . 

We  left  home  Saturday,  taking  the 
Barre  stage-coach  which  overtook  us  some 


104  Letters. 

four  miles  out  and  rode  on  the  top,  thinking 
it  a  high  arrangement  for  awhile.  It  did  not 
last  good  long.  We  soon  waked  up  to  the 
fact  that  we  were  only  passengers,  whereat 
we  had  a  hearty  laugh.  From  Barre  we 
took  to  our  feet  in  earnest  and  with  gladness, 
and  walked  on  to  Dana,  where  we  expected 
to  pass  the  night,  but  failing  to  get  lodgings, 
rode  to  Greenwich  village  with  a  man  in  a 
narrow  buggy,  who  caried  the  mail  and 
who  was  reeling  drunk.  The  tr-r-r-onk  of 
the  bull-frogs  through  the  night  was  the 
most  interesting  thing  we  found  there,  but 
the  inhabitants  prided  themselves  less  upon 
that  than  upon  the  new  saw-mill  there. 

Sunday  morning  we  had  a  high  walk  of 
ten  miles  to  Shutesbury,  which  is  on  a 
mountain.  There  we  went  to  meeting,  in 
the  afternoon.  I  enjoyed  the  singing  and 
felt  while  that  was  going  on  quite  sober  and 
loving  towards  the  whole  human  family,  in 

~  •/    ' 

spite  of  the  funny  Shutesbury  bonnets  or 
hats  and  some  of  the  funnier  giggling  faces 
under  them.  We  then  came  on  to  Leverett, 


Letters.  105 

over  a  succession  of  plateaus  or  intervals  in 
which  were  beautiful  farms,  very  attractive 
looking  places  in  which  to  live.  On  Mon 
day  morning  we  passed  through  Sunderland, 
walking  through  fields  of  grain,  with  no 
fences,  which  made  the  roads  seem  private 
as  though  they  must  end  at  the  next  house. 
Such  roads  would  soon  grow  monotonous, 
for  being  made  of  rich  soil  there  are  none  of 
the  flowers  to  be  found  which  grow  by  com 
mon  road-sides — nothing  but  pig- weeds,  and 
such  other  uninteresting  weeds  as  grow 
among  grains.  So  much  of  the  letter.  Don't 
let  this  get  into  the  Atlantic  without  con 
sulting  me  ! 

If  you  would  like  to  follow  us  on  the 
map,  along  farther,  you  must  strike  the 
Deerfield  river  near  Shelburne,  but  below, 
at  a  great  bend  you  will  see,  and  follow  it  up 
to  Charlemont.  But  we  saw  many  things 
which  you  will  not  find  on  the  map. 

The  ancient  work  we  found,  and  near 
which  we  bathed,  is  not  on  the  map.  Great 
and  small  pot-holes,  and  a  beautiful  arch 


106  Letters. 

large  enough  for  a  man  in  a  boat  to  go 
through.  I  have  a  pleasant  remembrance 
of  the  flickering  of  the  reflected  sunlight 
up  under  the  top  of  said  arch  and  of  the 
one  harebell  I  found  near  our  bathing  place. 
Its  fragile  beauty  contrasted  strongly  with 
the  rugged  majesty  of  the  rocks  among  which 
it  grew.  The  end  of  our  journey  in  a  north 
westerly  direction  was  Williamstown.  You 
must  find  your  way  as  well  as  you  can  now. 
I  can  hardly  remember  the  order  of  the 
towns,  and  so  will  jump  you  about  back  and 
forth  anyway  for  awhile.  We  went  to 
Pittsfield  twice  because  it  was  in  our  way. 
Went  to  Lebanon,  the  Holy  of  Holies  of 
the  Shakers.  Worshipped,  but  did  not 
shake  with  them.  Went  to  the  Hoosac  tun 
nel  and  over  the  mountain,  under  Avhich  it 
is  to  go  if  it  goes.  It  goes  now  half  a  mile. 
The  entrance  looks  impressive  when  one 
thinks  of  the  miles  of  solid  rock  and  solid 
darkness  and  silence  through  which  it  is  to 
go.  I  can't  tell  you  much  about  the  great 
pink  orchids  on  the  top  of  the  mountain, 


Letters.  197 

with  the  morning  dew  on  them.  It  is  won 
derful  there  should  be  such  a  difference 
between  finding  flowers  in  such  a  place,  and 
finding  them  in  common  places.  All  of 
which  you  know  full  as  well  as  I,  but  if  I 
waited  to  tell  you  things  of  which  you 
are  ignorant,  when  would  you  get  a  note 
from  me?  A  locust  has  just  been  sino-ino- 

J  O       O" 

"Heaven  lies  about  us,"  somewhat  later 
than  "in  our  infancy"  when  the  locust 
sin^s. 


To  J.  D. 

I  have  lately  been  thinking  of  John 
Angler,  a  colored  man,  who  once  lived  and 
died  here.  He  presents  rather  an  inspiring 
figure  back  there  in  the  sunlight  of  a  certain 
morning,  when  he  came  up  from  the  meadow, 
back  of  Dr.  Hey  wood's  house,  with  a  long 
spear  in  one  hand,  and  several  muskrats  in 
the  other,  and  stood  his  spear  up  against  the 
store  and  brought  his  muskrats  in.  John 
was  a  good  deal  of  a  character.  He  seemed 


108  Letters. 

to  stand  nearer  nature  than  the  rest  of  us, 
and  could  talk  of  her  in  an  interesting  way. 
And  what  an  exuberance  of  life  and  spirit 
there  was  in  him  ;  and  what  a  wealth  of 
energy  !  The  hardest  work  was  play  to  him. 
And  he  impressed  one  as  one  who  had  an 
eye  for  fine  things,  to  which  many  men  of 

•/  o  •/ 

culture  seem  blind.  1  find  I  am  getting 
along  where  the  things  which  transpired  in 
my  youth  shine  out  with  a  lustre  that  time 
alone  can  give.  The  curly-haired,  tawny, 
boisterous  .John  Angier,  in  his  youth  slightly 
intoxicated  with  the  elixir  of  life,  in  the 
summer  sunlight  of  that  far  off  morning,  is 
worth  more  to  me,  I  fancy,  than  many  a 
work  of  art  I  can  think  of. 

Our  crocuses  are  not  in  flower  yet.  Of 
our  snow  nothing  remains,  save  here  and 
there  ' '  a  tattered  scarf,  thrown  over  the 
northern  shoulder  of  a  hill."  We  have 
hardly  had  a  morning  such  as  that  on  which 
Nathan  Hale  said  "If  I  were  a  crocus  I 
would  come  up  this  morning."  But  the 
spring  is  worrying  along  slowly,  hardly  ven- 


Letter*.  109 

taring  to  pee})  from  buds  or  birds  yet.  I 
must  take  a  walk  Sunday  and  see  whether 
the  alder  has  hung  its  tassels  out  yet.  In 
spite  of  their  wormy  look,  I  like  to  see  them. 
And  there  are  a  good  many  things  that  go 
with  them — the  note  of  the  blue-bird  and 
black-bird,  the  gurgling  of  water  and  the 
first  muddy,  guttural  mutterings  of  frogs. 
I  think  they  go  with  them ;  do  they  not? 


To  J.  D. 

Just  think  of  your  old  Boylston,  in  this 
pleasant  sunlight,  while  the  sparkle  of  the 
morning  is  on,  with  the  song  of  the  newly 
arrived  bobolinks  flooding  the  dandelion 
bespangled  meadows.  I  saw  the  first  bobo 
link  last  Sunday.  Like  other  heroes,  he 
doesn't  come  in  till  late  in  the  play,  and 
Avhen  he  arrives  there  is  not  much  else  heard 
for  awhile.  I  presume  you  have  seen  one 
on  his  first  arrival  from  the  south,  breaking 
open  in  song,  on  the  wing,  some  twenty 
rods  from  the  spear  of  grass  on  which  he 


1 10  Letters. 

alights,  bending  it  with  his  weight,  and 
dropping  down  out  of  sight.  Have  you 
heard  we  are  to  have  no  cherry  blossoms  this 
spring?  How  are  we  to  get  along  without 
them  ?  Just  think  !  Suppose  one  summer 
should  come  and  go,  and  no  flower  bloom, 
or  bird  sing,  hyla  peep,  or  frog  croak ! 
Perhaps  we  should  thus  be  taught  better 
to  appreciate  these  luxuries. 


To  J.  D. 

The  Adventists  are  having  a  revival 
here,  they  say.  I  went  to  their  chapel  last 
evening.  They  have  a  new  preacher,  who 
reasons  from  the  "abomination  of  desola 
tion,"  instead  of  the  Imperial  decrees,  as 
has  been  the  fashion,  which  you  can  easily 
see  leads  to  an  entirely  different  result. 
I  met  one  of  the  brethren  a  few  days  after, 
and  asked  him  what  lie  thought  of  the  argu 
ment.  He  expressed  some  doubt  about  the 
possibility  of  setting  up  the  "  abomination  of 


Letters.  \  \  \ 

desolation,"  but  said  "  if  that  can  be  set  up, 
so  as  to  put  the  saints  into  the  little  horn,  I 
don't  ask  anything  else  ;  it  is  all  clear  enough 
to  me."  And  he  said  it  with  an  emphasis  ; 
but  the  little  "  if,"  which  he  was  forced  to 
use,  robbed  the  sentence  of  the  terror  with 
which  it  might  have  otherwise  inspired 
me. 

I  saw  he  had  very  little  faith  in  such  a 
possibility,  and  so  much  hinges  on  that !  If 
that  can't  be  done,  the  saints  can't  be  put 
into  the  little  horn,  and  we  are  all  afloat, 
and  the  world  may  go  on  yet  any  length  of 
time.  I  am  sorry  they  have  given  up  the 
apocalyptical  beasts  and  lobsters,  which  we 
always  used  to  see  pictured  on  the  charts, 
at  their  meetings.  They  were  very  interest 
ing  to  me,  especially  that  great  stout  fellow 
in  a  brass  apron,  in  whose  great  toe  'twas 
said  we  were  a  few  years  ago.  I  fear  they 
have  had  to  give  him  up.  It  seems  strange, 
after  getting  us  so  near  through  they  should 
fail.  I  think  they  will  not  accomplish 
much  without  a  good  reliable  chart. 


112  Letters. 

We  tried  our  hands  at  making  epitaphvS 
at  Chamberlin's  the  other  evening.  The 
name  of  Solomon  Pease  was  suggested.  I 
was  so  much  absorbed  in  mine  that  I  do  not 
remember  any  of  the  others.  So  here  it 


Under  this  sod,  beneath  these  trees, 
Lieth  the  pod  of  Solomon  Pease. 


To  L.  P.  H. 

That  little  burst  of  enthusiasm  about 
the  day  you  poured  on  me  in  your  note, 
was  duly  enjoyed.  Your  faithfulness  over 
the  few  little  things,  such  as  are  found  in 
dooryards,  will  undoubtedly  make  you  ruler 
over  many.  Bye-and-bye  you  shall  spend 
these  great  days,  in  walking  toward  some 
celestial  Holden  and  sit  on  celestial  hill-tops 
on  the  way,  and  hear  celestial  bobolinks, 
song-sparrows,  larks,  etc.  I  hope  they  will 
be  as  good  as  these  earthly  ones.  Of  all 
the  springs  that  ever  sprung,  was  there  ever 


Letters.  113 

one  like  this  ?  But  with  the  cares  of  busi 
ness,  I  feel  as  though  the  principal  part  of 
it  was  slipping  through  my  fingers,  as  in 
deed  what  one  has  not,  for  the  last  fifty 
years  !  I  saw  my  first  bobolink  last  Sunday. 
He  looked  as  if  he  had  just  arrived,  and  he 
broke  open  in  the  air  and  flooded  with  his 
song  a  little  meadow  beneath  him.  The  roll 
of  the  toad  is  seldom  mentioned  in  any  de 
scriptions  of  them.  That  road  which  you 
left  running  into  a  purple  mist  or  sunset  is 
a,  good  one.  I  like  that  sort  of  ending  for 
things.  Except  knowledge  ends  thus,  it  is 
as  uninteresting  as  the  multiplication  table. 
The  mist  of  ignorance  sometimes  comes  so 
near,  that  it  might  be  mistaken  for  a  fog. 


To  L.  P.  H. 

This  is  a  charming  summer  afternoon. 
A  locust  is  Z-iwj  and  crickets  are  chirping, 
and  we  listen  to  them  in  the  rests  of  one  of 
Mendelssohn's  songs  without  words  Avhich 


114  Letters. 

Alice  is  playing.  And  this  reminds  me  of 
certain  other  notes  without  words,  which  I 
occasionally  receive,  and  one  of  which  I 
have  just  been  reading.  Well,  I  think  I  got 
at  what  was  in  the  mind  of  the  person  who 
did  it  and  I  enjoyed  it,  especially  after  a 
second  rehearsal.  But  this  seems  mean  after 
getting  such  a  pleasant  thing  as  this  you 
have  just  thought  to  me,  and  if  these  things 
you  pass  off  for  notes  were  not  so  handsome 
I  presume  I  should  have  kept  silent.  I 
must  allow,  however,  that  these  things  you 
make  do  resemble  sentences,  though  you 
seldom  use  any  ivords  and  never  any  letters 
to  make  them  of.  But  I  did  not  find  a 
great  deal  of  trouble,  or  rather  I  should  say, 
I  found  a  great  deal  of  pleasure,  in  making 
out  the  toughest  words  in  your  note  ;  you 
have  the  faculty  of  ivord-painting,  if  not 
word-writing,  for  I  have  from  your  de 
scription  a  vivid  impression  of  the  place  you 
are  in.  I  should  like  to  try  the  mountains 
again  and  be  lifted  up  with  them.  I  think 
they  are  more  inspiring  than  the  sea. 


Letters.  115 

To  L.  P.  PI. 

I  walked  on  a  narrow  string-piece,  to 
day,  between  two  heavens, — one,  as  usual, 
above,  the  other  below.  You  would  like  to 
know  ho\v  I  did  that.  Well,  I  walked  on 
Long  Pond.  Many  things  can  he  done  on 
and  about  that, — and  it  was  nearly  all  Avater 
over  the  ice  except  a  narroAv  strip  on  Avhich 
I  walked.  The  loAA^er  heavens  looked  just 
as  real  as  those  above.  There  Avas  no  earth, 
and  I  Avas  alone  betAveen  these  tAvo  concaves, 
and  it  was  a  high  Avalk  and  a  A'ery  clean  one. 
If  I  had  slumped  through,  I  should  have 
gone  straight  do\vn  to  heaAren.  But  I  did 
not  slum})  and  I  kept  my  balance,  and  got 
safely  on  earth  again. 

I  sat  on  Wigwam  Hill  aAvhilc,  in  or 
near  the  spot  Avhere  we  had  our  picnic. 
The  view  down  the  pond  Avas  charming. 
The  water  on  the  ice  made  the  reflections 
very  beautiful.  But  aAATful  work  Avas  going 
on  in  the  "Sanctuary."  Many  if  not  all 
the  large  trees  are  being  cut  doAvn,  and  I 


116  Letters. 

heard  the  crash  of  some  of  them  while  I 
was  there. 

Emerson  read  a  letter  to  us,  when  he  was 
here  the  other  day,  from  some  one  out  west, 
a  stranger, — a  very  bright  letter,  but  I  can't 
tell  much  about  it.  One  line  I  remember 
which  pleased  Emerson  very  much.  Here 
it  is  : — 

"  Life  is  a  flame,  whose  splendor  hides  its  base." 

I  asked  Harry  the  other  day,  while 
walking,  to  make  a  line  to  go  with  it,  which 
he  did  very  successfully  : — 

"  The  spirit's  light  may  gild  the  plainest  face; 
Life  is  a  flame,  whose  splendor  hides  its  base." 


To  L.  P.  H. 

Your  letters  of  Nov'r  7th  we  received, 
and  have  read  them  only  three  times  yet, — 
but  with  great  pleasure.  They  are  saturated 
with  Oriental  life.  I  felt  the  dark,  myste 
rious  Pagan  spirit,  in  the  bark  and  crowing 
of  those  heathen  dogs  and  cats.  I  wish  we 
could  have  a  photograph  of  you,  when  call- 


Letters.  117 

ing  on  the  Princess,  smoking.  How  like  a 
charade  it  must  have  seemed  to  you.  Possi 
bly  you  may  have  contracted  the  habit  of 
smoking  and  that  we  may  smoke  together 
when  you  get  home. 

I  can  imagine  the  surprise  of  the  Eng 
lish  family  on  seeing  you  taken  into  the 
royal  gondola  while  they  found  such  con 
veyance  as  they  could.  I  fancy  there  is 
just  enough  of  the  "  natural  man  "  left  in 
you  to  have  enjoyed  that,  in  a  quiet  way. 

Where  did  you  eat  your  Thanksgiving 
dinner?  and  did  you  have  an  Egyptian 
turkey  ?  We  had  a  great  time  at  our  family 
party  last  night.  The  boys  got  up  a  train  of 
cars  and  a  steamboat  in  great  shape  (the 
family  cradle  serving  as  a  life-boat),  which 
vehicles  were  made  to  convey  the  Brown 
family  to  the  Paris  Exposition,  starting  from 
Seekonk.  Their  voyage  was  full  of  inci 
dents,  both  pleasurable  and  painful. 

We  ventured  on  Opera  again,  though 
you  were  absent,  and  got  along  very  well,  I 
thouo-ht.  I  hope  to  have  the  pleasure  of 


118  Letters. 

dying  with  you  in  Opera  again  ;  dying  sort 
of  quietly,  you  know — not  in  a  way  to  im 
pair  your  health,  like  that  death  of  yours 
on  a  similar  occasion  a  year  ag-o. 

*  o 

We  are  having  a  course  of  lectures  in 
Brinley  Hall,  which  Chamberlin  and  I  are 
getting  up ;  they  are  giving  great  pleasure 
to  those  who  hear  them.  Greek  Mythology 
is  the  subject.  John  Weiss  helps  us.  He 
wrote  them  and  delivers  them,  and  we  do 
all  the  rest.  They  are  delightful.  I  enjoy 
them  very  much,  even  when  I  have  little 
idea  of  what  is  going  on,  which  is  a  good 
part  of  the  time.  I  enjoyed  seeing  Weiss 
at  the  Chaniberlins'  the  other  night,  after 
the  lecture.  He  told  a  funny  incident  of  his 
boy  days  in  Worcester.  In  company  with 
some  other  boys,  he  was  passing  Mrs. 
Macarty's  garden,  in  which  were  some 
tempting  cherries.  One  of  the  boys  said, 
"  Let's  get  over  the  fence  and  hook  some 
cherries  ! "  But  Weiss  said  he  had  the  pre 
caution  to  look  through  a  knot-hole,  into  the 
garden,  and  saw  some  one  walking  there, 


Letters.  119 

whereupon  he  said,  "  No,  I  shan't  steal  any 
cherries.  I  am  going  home."  Soon  after 
his  arrival  home,  a  basket  of  cherries  arrived 
from  Mrs.  Macarty,  for  the  good  little  boy 
who  would  not  steal.  Weiss  said  he  swal 
lowed  the  cherries  and  the  praise  with  equal 
readiness.  What  an  excellent  Sunday  school 
story  with  the  knot-hole  left  out !  How 
many  Sunday  school  stories  have  been  writ 
ten  with  the  knot-hole  left  out ! 


To  L.  P.  H. 

Those  were  "Heaven-sweet"  days,  as 
you  say,  and  it  was  very  pleasant  to  have 
you  say  so.  Thursday  was  one  of  them, 
and  we  took  that,  Harry  and  I,  for  Dudley, 
starting  in  the  early  train  and  leaving  it  at 
Webster.  The  sun  came  leisurely  and 
majestically  up,  while  we  were  tearing  along 
with  such  rattle  and  rumble  and  smoke.  On 
o-oino-  through  one  of  the  Oxfords  I  noticed 

O  O  c5 

o-irls  standing  in  the  belfry  of  a  church- 
all  o-olden  they  were  with  the  just  risen  sun. 


120  Letters. 

I  fancied  them  Pagans  and  that  they  were 
there  for  worship,  and  that  they  had  played 
with  the  fringe  of  the  dawn  and  done  many 
other  fine  things,  until  now  they  were  bathed 
in  the  effulgence  of  day.  And  so  I  was  in 
spired  perhaps  as  much  as  they,  though  they 
were  in  one  and  I  was  not. 

We  breakfasted  with  the  Russells,  after 
which  we  went  to  Peter  pond — a  beautiful 
1  ittle  retired  pond ;  Peter  the  Hermit,  we 
will  call  it.  It  has  fine  echoes.  Our  rough 
calls  came  back  much  more  musical  than 
they  went.  High  on  some  rocks  on  the  hill 
on  the  east  side  of  the  pond  we  sat  and 
smoked  and  chatted,  and  Harry  read  one  of 
Thoreau's  letters  and  we  had  a  good  time 
generally.  I  ought  to  make  mention  of  two 
hunters  still  higher  than  we,  on  a  crag  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  pond,  occasionally 
firin<r  their  inms,  the  smoke  of  which  we 

O  O  7 

could  see  some  time  before  hearing  the 
report.  They  looked  a  long  wa}T  off,  and 
yet  we  could  hear  their  talk,  but  not  what 
they  said,  so  it  was  interesting. 


Letters.  121 

Mr.  Alcott  has  been  here — read  a  criti 
cism  of  Emerson  at  our  house  last  evenin^ : 

O 

and  there  was  conversation  before  and  after 
the  reading,  parts  of  which  were  as  good, 
perhaps,  as  if  we  had  sat  down  with  the 
avowed  object  of  conversing. 

Are  not  these  days  delicious?  The 
fact  that  they  are  looked  on  through  the 
loving  eyes  of  our  friends  enhances  their 
value  to  us. 


To  J.  D. 

I  took  a  long  walk  last  Sunday.  It 
was  one  of  the  days  to  walk  in  ;  a  high 
sounding  day,  with  a  great  wind  to  it,  and 
splendid  sunlight ;  white  clouds  freighted 
with  light,  hurrying  across  the  beautiful  blue 
sky,  squirrels  scampering,  pines  silvered 
with  light  tossing  their  cones,  etc.  You 
know  all  about  it.  The  end  to  my  walk 
was  a  visit  to  a  little  meadow  in  Auburn, 
which  I  once  found  sprinkled  with  the  Grass 
of  Parnassus,  small  flowers  resembling  but- 


122  Letters. 

tercups,  only  less  yellow.  It  was  late  in 
the  autumn  and  I  recollect  wondering  how 
they  had  withstood  the  vertical  rays  of  sum 
mer  and  waited  for  the  slanting  beams  of  an 
October  sun  to  pry  open  their  pale  petals. 
I  found  the  meadow,  but  not  the  flowers. 
They  had  flowered,  I  presume,  and  got  their 
seeds  in  the  ground  for  another  crop,  next 
autumn.  The  time  will  come  round  soon — 
only  eleven  months !  How  fast  we  are 
going,  my  friend,  so  fast  that  we  may  get 
out  of  breath  !  Well,  we  have  had  a  good 
time.  I  am  glad  I  was  invited  and  glad  I 
came,  and  am  glad  you  came,  however  much 
you  have  found  of  which  to  complain. 


To  E.  B.  L. 

I  sat  awhile  to-day  in  the  edge  of  the 
woods  opposite  Bell  Pond.  The  flashing 
and  glitter  of  the  bright  morning  sunlight 
on  the  water,  and  the  shimmer  of  the  same 
on  the  trees  on  the  east  side,  with  the 


Letters.  123 

autumnal  colors,  made  a  handsome  picture, 
set  in  an  oval  frame  of  blue  sky,  and  the 
walk  through  the  woods  amid  such  gorgeous 
colors  was  interesting.     The  great  silence  of 
these  autumn  days  is  broken  by  little  else 
than  the  music  of  insects,  and  that  hardly 
displaces  the  silence.     Think  of  the  count 
less  acres  of  golden-rods  and  asters,  hanging 
their  contemplative   heads  in   these   sunny 
days,  their  tops  filled  with  bees  and  buzzers 
of   all   sorts.     The    colors  are  getting  less 
brilliant  every  day,  but  there  is  nothing  to 
complain    of  in  the    way  of   beauty   now. 
The  birds,  with  the  exception  of  the  crow, 
jay  and  chickadee,  are  silent,  or  were  to-day. 
I  saw  but  one  butterfly,  a  yellow  one,  and 
he  was    faded   and  ragged,  and  looked  as 
though  he  did  not  place  a  high  estimate  on 
the  remainder  of  his  earthly  life.     In  spite 
of  his  having  been  used  as  the  emblem  of 
immortality  the  months  have  told  on  him, 
and  in  the  course  of  a  few  weeks  probably 
he  will  breathe  his  last,  very  likely    on  a 
thistle  blossom.     He  will  not,  like  the  worm 


124  Letters. 

from  which  he  emerged,  wrap  the  drapery 
of  his  couch  about  him  and  lie  down  to 
make  a  butterfly. 


To  E.  B.  L. 

A  spring  morning  like  this,  brings  back 
vividly  to  my  mind  other  spring  mornings  in 
Attleborough,  some  fifty  years  ago.  Some 
times  a  whiff  of  that  life  comes  back  to  me, 
in  an  odor ;  by  the  mere  act  of  thought  I 
can  smell  the  pine  boards  laid  over  the  fence 
to  dry,  in  Mr.  Allen's  yard,  and  I  can  hear 
the  pewee,  and  the  ripe  notes  of  the  martins 
who  built  their  nests  under  the  eaves  of  the 
house — oh  !  how  long  those  summer  days 
were.  Especially  some  of  those  in  which  I 
rode  the  horse  to  plough  when  the  sun 
stood  still  in  the  heavens  and  would  not  go 
down — only  one  or  two  half-holidays  in  the 
year,  and  work  in  which  I  took  no  interest. 
It  would  be  difficult  for  me  to  tell  what  I 
was  interested  in.  I  think  I  was  a  little 


Letters.  125 

interested  in  the  face  of  one  of  the  girls  at 
the  school  I  attended  (to  how  little  purpose  !) 
for  that  face  still  holds  its  place  in  my 
memory,  though  the  name  of  its  owner  is 
forgotten,  very  cross  eyes  she  had,  but  a 
sweet  expression  of  countenance,  beautiful 
flesh  and  blood  and  youth.  Industry  was 
Asa  Allen's  "strong  holt,"  and  he  rounded 
his  back  by  it.  His  minister  called  on  him 
two  or  three  times  a  year  (he  was  a  Univer- 
salist),  and  then  he  would  take  off  his  apron 
and  take  him  into  the  house,  and  take  out 
his  gin  bottle,  and  become  quite  animated 
in  talking  about  the  cause  of  Universalism. 
How  some  Orthodox  had  been  worsted  in  an 
encounter  with  Hosea  Ballon,  the  "great 
gun  "  of  Universalism  in  that  day.  I  can 
sec  Mrs.  Allen  as  she  sat  listening  to  the 
argument  they  brought  out  to  prove  their 
belief,  her  kindly  face  beaming  and  running 
over  with  good  feeling.  She  was  as  good  as 
the  dav  was  long,  but  her  cooking  was  inex 
pressive.  Her  toasts  were  moist  enough, 
but  the  milk  that  moistened  them  had  under- 


126  Letters. 

gone  an  awful  strain,  and  the  tea  and  coffee 
drinking  was  purely  a  work  of  fiction. 


To  J.  D. 

Alice  is  playing  a  Sonata  of  Beethoven's. 
The  first  movement  takes  right  hold  of  me. 
We  have  been  listening  to  some  of  Wagner's 
music  this  winter,  played  by  Thomas's 
orchestra,  and  made  crazy  by  it,  and  almost 
ready  to  say,  that  everything  in  the  past  has 
been  dwarfed  bv  it,  but  while  hearing  this 

•/  o 

passage,  from  Beethoven,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  effect  of  Wagner's  music  on  me 
was  cheap  compared  with  this.  Not  long 
since  we  heard  at  a  concert  something  of 
Mozart's  which  was  new  tome,  and  delighted 
me  beyond  measure.  It  opened  with  a  little 
fragment  of  an  air,  which  was  so  simple 
that  one  suspects  the  composer  picked  it  up 
out  of  curiosity  to  see  what  could  be  done 
with  such  a  little  thing,  but  by  repetition,  it 
grows  on  him,  and  he  gets  in  love  with 


Letters.  127 

it  and  the  way  he  fondles  it  and  wreathes 
his  beautiful  fancies  round  it,  and  then  tosses 
it  into  other  keys,  and  does  the  like,  only 
differently  with  it  there,  is  charming. 

I  was  surprised  in  reading  an  old  Har 
per's  Magazine  to  stumble  on  a  saying  of 
mine,  and  T  was  glad  to  see  it,  for  the  recol 
lection  it  brought  me,  of  my  feeling  for 
Emerson  in  those  days.  My  little  joke  is 
immortalized  by  being  put  in  contrast  with 
one  of  Emerson's,  viz.,  his  answer  to  a 
crazy  Millerite,  who  had  been  telling  him 
the  world  was  coming  to  an  end.  "  Let  it 
come,"  said  Emerson,  "we  can  get  along 
just  as  well  without  it."  Now  for  mine,  and 
after  all  this  preparation,  you  will  be  sur 
prised  at  the  size  of  the  mouse  the  mountain 
has  produced.  I  was  on  my  way  in  com 
pany  with  others  to  hear  Emerson  deliver  a 
"Phi  Beta"  oration.  Some  anxiety  was 
expressed  about  our  getting  there  in  season, 
I  said,  "If  we  are  late,  it  is  better  to  miss 
hearing  Emerson,  than  to  hear  any  one 
else."  " 


128  Letters. 

To  E.  B.  L. 

I  should  like  to  write  you  about  some 
thing  new,  about  Bertha  if  I  knew  how  to 
do  it,  and  if  you  knew  her  as  we  do.  For 
some  months  after  landing  on  these  shores, 
she  exhibited  a  sweetness  and  a  serenity  of 
disposition  rare  for  one  of  her  months.  She 
not  merely  "  accepted  the  universe "  but 
took  hold  of  it  gladly  as  being  just  what  she 
wanted.  No  filmiest  cloud  of  those  she 
trailed  in  coming  shaded  her  serene  brow 
and  it  seemed  as  though  she  began  with 
virtues  with  which  some  of  us  older  ones 
fail  to  end.  But  she  is  beginning  to  show 
certain  indications  that  those  virtues  may 
not  wear  as  well  as  when  they  are  arrived  at 
through  experience.  She  already  gives  indi 
cations  that  she  prefers  her  way,  to  that  of 
any  one  else,  and  if  she  don't  have  it,  it  will 
be  through  no  fault  of  hers.  But  her  worst 
ways  are  winning. 


Letters.  12J> 

To  H.  G.  O.  B. 

I  have  lately  bought  a  cheap  photo 
graph,  the  original  by  Ilolman  Hunt.  This 
picture  is  a  rare  delight  to  me.  The  face  of 
the  youthful  Jesus  among  the  doctors,  is 
very  beautiful.  His  attitude  and  expression 
as  he  bends  toward  his  mother,  who  anxiously 
leans  forward  to  speak  to  him, — how  much 
there  is  in  that !  His  great  wondering  eyes 
and  face  full  of  genius.  Among  the  old 
doctors  sitting  around  is  one  kindly  face, 
who  looks  as  though  he  must  love  the  young 
Na/arine  and  was  disposed  to  hear  what  he 
had  to  say,  but  it  seems  unreasonable  to 
suppose  he  is  going  to  give  up  his  way  of 
thinking  and  all  that  Jewish  ritual,  to  one 
who  has  so  little  past,  and  appeals  to  none 
back  of  himself.  But  the  face  of  Jesus  is 
the  picture. 


130  Letters. 

JEFFERSON,  N.  H.,  July  17th,  1877. 
To  A.  W. 

If  I  could  give  you  any  idea  of  the 
grandeur  and  beauty  of  the  view  from  this 
window,  you  would  pack  your  trunks  at 
once.  You  have  lived  long  enough  without 
seeing  these  mountains.  They  are  "big 
things."  But  the  size  is  only  an  item  in  the 
make  up  of  a  mountain.  I  foolishly  said  to 
Harry  once,  when  he  proposed  going  to  one, 
"  Why  not  imagine  your  mountains,  and  so 
have  them  as  high  as  you  like?"  and  perpe 
trated  the  following  stanza  : — 

Packed  in  my  mind  my  mountains  lie, 
And  stop  not  with  this  pent-up  sky ; 
From  them  I  can  look  down  in  scorn 
On  yonder  petty  Matterhorn. 

But  as  magnitude  is  but  one  item,  and 
imaginary  magnitude  so  poor  compared  with 
that  which  is  real,  one  sees  that  his  imagi 
nary  one,  though  it  were  twice  as  high,  will 


Letters.  131 

not  do  at  all,  for  there  is  all  the  marvellous 
variety  and  delicacy  of  eolorin^ 

••  o 

"  Daily  on  them  laid, 
By  atmosphere,  and  sun  and  shade," 

too  beautiful  to  be  imagined  or  even  to  be 
remembered,  so  well  as  to  prevent  surprise 
at  every  fresh  sight  of  them.  We  have  the 
whole  Presidential  range  (I  hate  the  name  !) 
in  our  front  and  side  yard. 


To  J.  D. 

I  came  across  a  sentence  lately,  which 
the  writer  thought  a  fair  summing  up  of 
the  Pessimistic  philosophy,  "Life  is  a  use 
lessly  interrupting  episode  in  the  blissful 
repose  of  the  non-existent."  With  our 
somewhat  limited  or  rather  indistinct  recol 
lection  of  our  non-existence,  it  is  rather 
difficult  to  take  sides  decidedly  in  this  mat 
ter.  I  fancy  there  are  some  who  might  feel 
disposed  to  accept  the  statement ;  for  in 
stance,  a  man  with  a  large  family  of  children 


132  Letters. 

when  he  vainly  seeks  the  work  and  wages 
necessary  for  their  support.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  young  and  healthy  bobolink  would 
hesitate  about  subscribing.  He  has  some 
how  got  it  into  his  head  that  swinging  on 
grass  stems  in  pleasant  meadows  and  singing 
among  apple-blossoms  is  something  short  of 
the  worst  possible  condition  that  could  be 
imagined.  Speaking  of  apple-blossoms,— 
we  went  into  the  country  last  week,  and 
saw  them  at  their  best,  and  the  lilacs  also. 
I  have  a  great  affection  for  them.  I  asso 
ciate  them  with  the  single  red  roses  that 
grow  in  country  door-yards.  They  are 
to  me  what  the  old  almanacs  are  to  you, 
though  their  leaves  never  get  smoky. 

I  thank  you  for  that  stanza  from  the 
eighteen  hundred  and  three  almanac.  I 
have  seen  that  "  uplifting  of  a  vessel's 
icy  prow,"  but  when  or  where  I  do  not 
remember.  The  shaking  of  the  "  tall 
mountain's  frozen  head "  I  suppose  must 
be  all  right,  because  the  other  lines  are  so 
good. 


Letters.  133 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  they  have  built  a 
new  saw-mill  joining  the  little  Bannister's 
grist-mill.  I  did  suppose  that  place  was 
safe  for  our  lifetime  at  least.  Our  baby 
Bertha  may  live  to  see  the  old  saw-mill 
time-stained.  I  saw  her  riding  in  her  wagon 
just  now,  with  a  sprig  of  lupine  in  one  hand 
and  a  toy  eat  in  the  other.  The  world  seems 
to  be  quite  an  interesting  place  to  her,  and 
she  takes  great  satisfaction  in  shewing  it 
up  to  us,  and  gets  kissed  pretty  often  while 
doing  it. 


To  E.  B.  L. 

I  have  received  the  letter  in  which  you 
express  a  doubt  about  seeing  Uncle  Peter 
again.  You  must  remember  you  have  seen 
us  all  for  the  last  time,  a  great  many  times, 
but  that  need  not  prevent  your  coming  here 
in  the  spring,  when  we  Avill  go  to  Seekonk 
and  see  Uncle  Peter,  and  the  rocks  Avhere 
we  used  to  make  money,  and  the  old  button- 


134  Letters. 

wood  tree  on  which  our  swing  was  hung,  for 
I  think  it  is  still  standing.  Do  you  remem 
ber  the  little  forest  where  the  sassafras 
grew?  Stanley  never  saw  anything  wilder 
in  his  travels  than  that  little  bit  of  woods  to 
my  young  eyes.  Do  you  remember  the 
cheese  we  hid  in  the  wall?  It  competed 
successfully  in  the  line  of  hardness  with  the 
stones.  The  cheese  was  given  us,  and  as  no 
teeth  could  masticate  it,  and  no  stomach 
undertake  to  digest  it,  its  fittest  use  seemed 
the  repairing  of  a  stone  wall.  How  many 
squirrels  must  have  worn  their  teeth  out, 
working  upon  it.  The  person  who  presented 
it  to  us,  also  gave  us  a  mince-pie.  She  was 
present  when  it  was  brought  to  the  table, 
and  exclaimed,  "  Why,  that  is  one  of  my 
best  pies  !  "  I  think  now  a  very  youthful 
appetite  would  be  necessary  to  enjoy  even 
her  best  pies.  I  went  to  Seekonk  the  other 
day  and  had  a  pleasant  chat  with  one  of  our 
old  playmates,  who  informed  me  there  was 
but  two  years  difference  in  our  ages,  and 
suddenly  her  face  became  a  mirror  to  me, 


Letters.  \  35 

in  which  I  saw  with  sufficient  distinctness — 
an  old  man. 


To  A.  B.  M. 

I  send  a  late  Index  containing  an  article 
by  S.  H.  Morse,  entitled  "Modern  Religious 
Sentiment."  I  have  read  it  several  times 
with  interest.  What  he  says  about  our 
being  more  than  one,  came  to  me  with 
force,  in  consequence  of  an  experience  I 
had  a  long  time  ago,  My  life  was  in  great 
danger  and  I  was  tremendously  frightened, 
that  is,  one  of  us  ivas,  but  there  was  another 
person  just  above,  who  "  lay  stretched  in 
smiling  repose,"  a  calm  spectator  looking 
down  to  see  how  the  person  below  would 
behave  in  his  trying  position.  This  sug 
gested  to  me  in  a  lively  way  the  probability 
that  all  the  evidence  is  not  vet  in. 


136  Letters. 

It  would  seem  as  if  our  days  ought  to 
be  of  consequence  enough,  so  that,  at  night, 
we  should  sort  over  our  experiences  and  find 
something  worth  saving  and  laying  away. 
This  sounds  well,  and  if  you  were  more  of 
a  stranger  you  might  think  I  was  doing 
something  in  that  line  myself.  My  mood 
to-day  is  retrospective,  made  so  it  seems  to 
me  by  the  tolling  of  the  church  bells,  which 
my  ears  seem  to  remember,  and  all  the  past 
presses  with  about  equal  weight  to  be 
written ;  all  of  it  seems  good  and  it  is 
pleasant  to  think  of  recalling  an}r  of  it. 


The  music  of  the  locust's  song  is  worth 
much  to  me  ;  as  I  listen  to  it  there  seems 
but  the  thinnest  gauze  between  me  and  the 
best  things  in  the  universe.  If  I  could  only 
catch  one  of  the  world  of  fine  things,  it 
almost  suggests  to  me  ! 


Letter*.  1H7 

We  have  lately  had  a  series  of  concerts 
from  the  Boston  Quintette  Club,  which  we 
used  to  hear  in  our  youth,  mine,  I  mean,  in 
the  same  place,  Brinley  Hall. — They  sug 
gested  to  me  the  comparison  of  life  to  a 
musical  composition.  We  have  now  re 
turned  to  the  theme. 


ENIGMA. 

More  subtle  than  sunlight  am  I. 

The  life  of  all  action  and  thought— 
Without  me  your  best  projects  die, 

With  me  your  icomt  may  be  fraught. 

Men  invent  many  ways  me  to  bind, 
And  exclusively  make  me  their  own  ; 

And  when  feeling  most  sure  me  to  find. 
They're  surprised  to  find  I  have  flown. 

The  Shekiuahs  I  build,  I  forsake 

Contented  in  few  long  to  stay ; 
Strange  new  ones  't  is  my  business  to  make, 

At  this  game  forever  I  play. 

My  realm  is  all  nature  and  art, 
In  high  and  low  places  I  dwell; 

Of  heaven  I  am  the  best  part. 
\nd  also  the  worst  part  of  hell. 
10 


mm         si  i  ill 
I   II 

iil||i|!l  lllllliylll  i''| 

111 

iSiillililiiluillii ! 

iii 


